Strike 3 Holdings, LLC v. Doe
- Gregory Woods
- 1:24-cv-05661
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Strike 3 Holdings v. Doe, Judge Woods granted leave to seek early subpoena discovery and postponed the initial scheduling conference until further notice.
Strike 3 Holdings, LLC may file a motion seeking early discovery to identify the Doe defendant. The unidentified defendant’s identity may be sought from Optimum Online if the court later grants the subpoena motion. The scheduled initial pretrial conference and related submissions were postponed.
What happened
Strike 3 Holdings, LLC sued an unidentified Doe defendant for allegedly infringing its copyrights through the BitTorrent file-sharing network. The company says it knows the defendant only by an Internet Protocol address and that the defendant’s Internet service provider, Optimum Online, may have records identifying the subscriber.
Strike 3 asked for permission to file a motion seeking an early subpoena to Optimum Online, before the parties’ required discovery-planning meeting. It also asked to postpone the initial scheduling conference. The court granted permission to file the subpoena motion, set September 2, 2024, as the deadline for that motion, and postponed the September 24, 2024, initial pretrial conference and related submissions without setting a new date.
Judge Gregory H. Woods issued the August 12, 2024 order. The order concerned early discovery and scheduling; it did not decide whether the subpoena would ultimately issue or resolve the copyright-infringement claims.
The detailed version
- Strike 3 Holdings, LLC v. Doe · No. 1:24-cv-05661
- Gregory Woods
- Aug. 12, 2024
Background
Strike 3 Holdings, LLC sued a John Doe defendant whose name and address were not known. According to Strike 3’s request, the defendant’s Internet Protocol address had allegedly been used repeatedly to infringe copyrights through the BitTorrent file-distribution network. Strike 3 stated that it owns three subscription-based adult websites and the copyrights to the movies distributed through those websites.
Strike 3 identified Optimum Online as the Internet service provider associated with the Internet Protocol address. It said that the provider’s records could connect the address to a customer and that such records may be retained only for a short time.
Request and Ruling
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(d)(1), discovery generally cannot begin before the parties hold a Rule 26(f) conference, which is the required meeting about the discovery process. Strike 3 asked for permission to file a motion seeking leave to serve a third-party subpoena on Optimum Online before that conference. A third-party subpoena is a formal demand for information from someone or an entity that is not a party to the lawsuit.
Strike 3 argued that early discovery was justified because it would present an initial, legally sufficient showing of copyright infringement; its request would be specific; no alternative method could provide the defendant’s identity; the information was central to the case; and the defendant had only a limited privacy interest in the alleged distribution of copyrighted material.
The court granted Strike 3’s application for leave to file the motion seeking permission to serve the third-party subpoena under Rule 26(d)(1). The court ordered that motion to be filed no later than September 2, 2024. The court also postponed the initial pretrial conference, which had been scheduled for September 24, 2024, along with the related pre-conference submissions, without setting a new date.
Scope of the Order
This order granted permission to seek early discovery; it did not itself order Optimum Online to disclose information, identify the Doe defendant, or decide the copyright-infringement claims. The opinion does not state a final ruling on the merits of those claims.
Disposition
Application granted. Leave to file the motion seeking permission to serve a third-party subpoena was granted, the motion was due by September 2, 2024, and the initial pretrial conference and related submissions were postponed without a new date. Judge Gregory H. Woods signed the order.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.