DC Judge Gives US Copyright Group Until Dec 6th to Sue

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Federal Judge Rosemary Collyer denies US Copyright group’s request to extend the deadline for identifying and serving Defendants in the mass P2P lawsuit to 58 months, the amount of time Time Warner says it’ll take to identify the names of nearly 800 IP addresses, and also orders that it names only those Defendants in its suit that it believes the Court has “personal jurisdiction” over.
The US Copyright Group’s mass BitTorrent lawsuit campaign has taken a big hit in a recent ruling by U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer.

Although she has allowed the lawsuits to proceed, she has given it until December 6th to submit a list of Defendants it plans to sue, and only those that “whom it reasonably believes the Court has personal jurisdiction” over.

The US Copyright Group had asked for an extension of 58 months in order to give Time Warner, to which it submitted nearly 800 IP addresses alone, enough time to identify the names of the people with the IP addresses suspected of illegal file-sharing. The length of time was based on the fact that Time Warner has limited discovery to no more than 28 lookups per month.

Judge Collyer cites Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(m) which reads: “If a defendant is not served within 120 days after the complaint is filed, the court — on motion or on its own after notice to the plaintiff — must dismiss the action without prejudice against that defendant or other that service be made within a specified time.”

The only exception is if a Plaintiff shows “good cause for the failure” which is not shown for those John Does that have already been identified. For them she says an extension would be “patently unfair and prejudicial.”

The ruling is a blow to the US Copyright Groups’s efforts, and are sure to lead to a significant increase in its litigation costs.

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