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IP address is not enough to nail a pirate, court rules

by on29 August 2018


Copyright troll cries into its beer over of a load of cobblers 

The use of an IP address to identify a pirate has been rejected by a US court.

The owner of an adult foster care home who operated an open WiFi network, Thomas Gonzales, was accused of downloading the Adam Sandler movie The Cobbler by a troll called Cobbler Nevada LLC. He won $17,000 after being wrongfully targeted. The case went to appeal and in a ruling handed down yesterday by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Gonzales won again.

In Oregan during 2016, a judge dismissed a direct infringement complaint against Thomas Gonzales when it became clear that the defendant probably wasn’t the infringer.

Gonzales' "offending" was supposed to have happened in an adult foster care home he runs. His Comcast account, which was connected to an open WiFi network, had allegedly been used to download and share the movie. Due to the network’s open nature, anyone could’ve carried out the infringement.

According to TorrentFreak, Gonzales refused to hand over the names of other individuals with access to the WiFi network unless the Troll obtained a court order. The district court subsequently granted leave to depose Gonzales but the process did not reveal the identity of the infringer. Early 2017, District Judge Michael Simon ruled that the plaintiffs could not claim direct or indirect infringement and should pay Gonzales’ legal fees of $17,222.

“The Court will issue a Judgment dismissing with prejudice Plaintiff’s indirect infringement claim and without prejudice Plaintiff’s direct infringement claim against Mr. Gonzales”, the judge wrote.

By shifting the costs onto the rightsholders, the court hoped to send the message that bringing cases without solid evidence can prove costly. However, Cobbler Nevada LLC did not hear that message and took the case to appeal.

In a ruling handed down yesterday by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Margaret McKeown made it crystal clear that Cobbler Nevada LLC, the owner of the copyright in question, has no case against Gonzales.

“In this copyright action, we consider whether a bare allegation that a defendant is the registered subscriber of an Internet Protocol (‘IP’) address associated with infringing activity is sufficient to state a claim for direct or contributory infringement”, the judge writes.

“We conclude that it is not.”

“The direct infringement claim fails because Gonzales’s status as the registered subscriber of an infringing IP address, standing alone, does not create a reasonable inference that he is also the infringer. Because multiple devices and individuals may be able to connect via an IP address, simply identifying the IP subscriber solves only part of the puzzle. A plaintiff must allege something more to create a reasonable inference that a subscriber is also an infringer.”

Cobbler couldn’t show that Gonzales had done anything to encourage the downloading and sharing of the movie either.

The courst said that: “Identifying an infringer becomes even more difficult in instances like this one, where numerous people live in and visit a facility that uses the same internet service. While we recognize this obstacle to naming the correct defendant, this complication does not change the plaintiff’s burden to plead factual allegations that create a reasonable inference that the defendant is the infringer.”

 

Last modified on 29 August 2018
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