Court sides with record companies in dueling motions to dismiss

Elektra Entertainment Group, Inc. v. Perez is one of the thousands of copyright infringement lawsuits that the record companies have filed against accused individual P2P file-sharers. The suit is pending in a federal court in Oregon.

Defendant Dave Perez moved pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) to dismiss the copyright infringement claim filed agasint him, contending that the plaintiffs had failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. He argued that the complaint didn’t specify the sound recordings that were at issue, and that the plaintiffs hadn’t specified what activities constituted the illegal distribution of the copyrighted files.

The court rejected those arguments, however, noting that exhibits to the complaint listed the songs that were alleged to be infringed, and demonstrated that those songs were being made available through Kazaa.

Having denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss, the court next turned to a motion filed by the record companies under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(2) to voluntarily dismiss the infringement claim against Mr. Perez. It turns out that discovery in the case had revealed to the plaintiffs that maybe it wasn’t Dave Perez trading the files, but other members of his household.

Interestingly, Mr. Perez objected to the voluntary dismissal of the claim against him. That seems odd, doesn’t it, given that he had argued in his own motion that the claim should be dismissed? But a closer look reveals the likely motivation for Mr. Perez’s objection: he didn’t want his own counterclaim for attorney’s fees to get thrown out as well.

The court sided with the record companies, holding that Mr. Perez would not suffer any prejudice by having the suit dismissed. The fact that he had spent a significant amount of money defending the suit and should have been dismissed a year ago were insufficient arguments. The case against the remaining family members will apparently proceed.

Elektra Entertainment Group, Inc. v. Perez, No. 05-931, 2006 WL 3063493 (D.Or., October 25, 2006).