Frequent copyright plaintiff Strike 3 Holdings filed a motion with the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota seeking an order allowing Strike 3 to send a subpoena to Comcast, to learn who owns the account used to allegedly infringe copyright. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure created a bootstrapping problem or, as the court called it, a Catch-22, for Strike 3 – it was not able to confer with the unknown Doe defendant as required by Rule 26(f) because it could not identify the defendant, but it could not identify defendant without discovery from Comcast.
The court granted Strike 3’s motion for leave to take early discovery, finding that good cause existed for granting the request, and noting:
- Strike 3 had stated an actionable claim for copyright infringement,
- The discovery request was specific,
- There were no alternative means to ascertain defendant’s name and address,
- Strike 3 had to know defendant’s name and address in order to serve the summons and complaint, and
- Defendant’s expectation of privacy in his or her name and address was outweighed by Strike 3’s right to use the judicial process to pursue a plausible claim of copyright infringement.
On the last point, the court observed that the privacy interest was outweighed especially given that the court could craft a limited protective order under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c) to protect an innocent ISP subscriber and to account for the sensitive and personal nature of the subject matter of the lawsuit.
Strike 3 Holdings, LLC v. Doe, 2018 WL 2278110 (D.Minn. May 18, 2018)
About the Author: Evan Brown is a Chicago technology and intellectual property attorney. Call Evan at (630) 362-7237, send email to ebrown [at] internetcases.com, or follow him on Twitter @internetcases. Read Evan’s other blog, UDRP Tracker, for information about domain name disputes.