NJ Court Won’t Grant Strike 3 Expedited Discovery in ‘John Doe’ Cases (YNOT)

Read the full article by Gene Zorkin at YNOT.com

 CAMDEN, NJ – In an order issued late last week, United States Magistrate Judge Joel Schneider denied a request from Strike 3 Holdings for expedited discovery in a case where the adult entertainment company is seeking to unmask the subscribers behind IP addresses associated with the alleged piracy of Strike 3 content. Strike 3 is the entity which holds the copyrights on content produced for the popular adult brands Tushy, Vixen and Blacked, among other properties.

In the opinion explaining his decision, Schneider wrote that the “fundamental basis of the Court’s decision is its conclusion that, as pleaded, Strike 3’s complaints are futile.”

“The Court denies Strike 3 the right to bootstrap discovery based on a complaint that does not pass muster under [Federal Rule of Evidence] Fed.R.Civ.P.12(b)(6),” Schneider wrote. “Further, even if Strike 3 pleads a cognizable copyright infringement claim, the Court would still deny its requests for expedited discovery.”

Schneider went on to specify seven reasons Strike 3 doesn’t have good cause to request expedited discovery, including his assessment that the company “bases its complaints on unequivocal affirmative representations of alleged facts that it does not know to be true,” that Strike 3’s subpoenas are “misleading and create too great of an opportunity for misidentification” and that the “linchpin” of Strike 3’s good cause argument, “that expedited discovery is the only way to stop infringement of its works” is simply wrong.

Gene Zorkin has been covering legal and political issues for various adult publications (and under a variety of different pen names) since 2002.