Strike 3 Holdings, LLC v. Doe
- Kenneth Karas
- 7:24-cv-03217
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Strike 3 Holdings v. Doe, Judge Karas received a request to allow early subpoena discovery to identify the defendant and delay scheduling.
Strike 3 Holdings, LLC seeks information from Verizon Fios that could identify the unnamed defendant, and seeks to postpone case scheduling until that identification and service occur.
What happened
Strike 3 Holdings, LLC sued an unnamed defendant identified only by an Internet Protocol address, alleging copyright infringement through the BitTorrent file-sharing network. The plaintiff said it did not know the defendant’s name or address.
The plaintiff asked for permission to seek a subpoena to Verizon Fios before the required conference between the parties about discovery. It said the subpoena would help identify the defendant and that the internet service provider might have records linking the address to a customer.
The letter also asked that any initial scheduling conference be postponed until the defendant was identified and served. Judge Kenneth M. Karas received this request, but the provided text does not show that he granted or denied it.
The detailed version
- Strike 3 Holdings, LLC v. Doe · No. 7:24-cv-03217
- Kenneth Karas
- May 29, 2024
Document and requested relief
The provided text is a letter from Jacqueline M. James, representing Strike 3 Holdings, LLC, to Judge Kenneth M. Karas. It is labeled as the plaintiff’s pre-motion request. The text does not contain a court order or state that the court granted or denied any request.
Strike 3 Holdings said it owns three subscription-based adult websites and the copyrights to the movies distributed through those websites. It said the case concerns alleged direct copyright infringement using the BitTorrent file-distribution network. The defendant is identified in the case as “Doe” because the plaintiff knows only the Internet Protocol address associated with the alleged activity, not the defendant’s name or address.
Requested early discovery
The plaintiff asked for permission to file a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(d)(1) seeking leave to serve a third-party subpoena before the parties’ required discovery-planning conference under Rule 26(f). The proposed subpoena would be directed to Verizon Fios, which the plaintiff identified as the internet service provider. The plaintiff said the provider could use its records to identify the customer assigned the relevant Internet Protocol address at the relevant time.
The plaintiff argued that early discovery should be allowed for good cause. It stated that it would show a preliminary claim of copyright infringement, make a specific discovery request, show that no alternative way existed to obtain the defendant’s identity, establish that the information was central to the case, and argue that the defendant had only a limited expectation of privacy in the information.
Scheduling request
The plaintiff also asked the court to postpone any initial scheduling conference under Rule 16 until the defendant was identified and served, or not to schedule that conference until then.
Disposition
The provided text records the plaintiff’s requests and arguments. It does not state that Judge Kenneth M. Karas granted permission to file the discovery motion, authorized the subpoena, postponed the scheduling conference, or denied any request. Accordingly, no court disposition can be identified from this text.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.