US Copyright Group preparing new wave of P2P lawsuits

After Judge Rosemary Collyer dropped thousands of lawsuits against John Doe defendants accused of illegally sharing the film Far Cry because the District Court of Washington DC did not have jurisdiction, it appeared that the US Copyright Group (USCG) had given up on the mass lawsuits. However, an exclusive report this week from The Hollywood Reporter (THR) indicates that the USCG has retained a new client and is preparing to file a whole new wave of mass copyright infringement lawsuits.

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According to THR, attorney Thomas Dunlap of the USCG has stated that his firm has signed a deal with Nu Image films and is preparing a lawsuit targeting thousands of BitTorrent users who have allegedly shared the film The Expendables. And that’s just the first of the indie studio’s 180 films for which infringement suits are being planned.

Additionally, Dunlap claims that his firm is still working on re-filing the dropped Far Cry cases, possibly next week in Boston and soon after in Colorado, Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland. Once those cases are re-filed, additional lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Texas, and Illinois will follow.

Critics of the mass infringement lawsuits had pointed out that it would take a great deal of legwork to file these types of cases in several jurisdictions, but the USCG seems to have solved that issue by recruiting 15 different firms around the United States that will represent the cases among the many areas in which defendants reside. Those firms will even be empowered to legally pursue defendants who refuse to settle when they receive demand letters.

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Though Dunlap won’t reveal what his firm’s settlement rate is for these types of cases, he does claim that an average of twice as many defendants in the US cases settle as compared to those in Europe.  Apparently, it produces at least enough revenue to justify pursuing more.

Not everything is going well for Dunlap and his partners, however. Dmitriy Shirokov, one of the defendants in the Far Cry cases, has filed a class-action lawsuit against the firm on behalf of the nearly 4,600 accused John Does. Charges include fraudulent omissions, mail fraud, wire fraud, computer fraud and abuse, racketeering court, fraud on the Copyright Office, and consumer protection violations.

I’m quite disappointed to see more of these mass copyright infringement lawsuits being filed. It’s unfortunate that it will likely take at least a year to see any progress on the class-action lawsuit against the USCG that could finally put a stop to this nonsense.

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