Strike 3 Holdings, LLC v. Doe
- Victor Marrero
- 1:24-cv-08968
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Strike 3 Holdings v. Doe, Judge Marrero granted Strike 3 permission to file a motion seeking early third-party discovery to identify the defendant.
Strike 3 Holdings, LLC may file a motion seeking early third-party discovery from Verizon Fios to identify the unnamed Doe defendant. The order does not itself authorize the subpoena or identify the defendant.
What happened
Strike 3 Holdings, LLC sued an unidentified John Doe, saying the defendant used a BitTorrent network to infringe its copyrighted works. Strike 3 said it knew only the defendant’s Internet Protocol address and that Verizon Fios could use its records to identify the subscriber.
Strike 3 asked for permission to seek information from Verizon Fios before the parties’ required discovery conference. It also asked to postpone any initial scheduling conference until the defendant was identified and served.
Judge Victor Marrero granted Strike 3’s request to file a motion seeking permission for that early subpoena. The order does not state that the subpoena itself was authorized or that the scheduling conference was postponed.
The detailed version
- Strike 3 Holdings, LLC v. Doe · No. 1:24-cv-08968
- Victor Marrero
- Dec. 18, 2024
Background
Strike 3 Holdings, LLC alleged that an unidentified John Doe directly infringed its copyrights by using the BitTorrent file-distribution network. Strike 3 said it knew the defendant only by an Internet Protocol (IP) address assigned by the defendant’s Internet service provider, Verizon Fios. According to Strike 3, the provider’s records could connect that IP address to a customer’s identity, but those records might be kept only for a short time.
Plaintiff’s Request
Strike 3 asked for permission under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(d)(1) to file a motion seeking a third-party subpoena before the parties held their Rule 26(f) discovery conference. A subpoena is a court-backed demand for information from a person or entity that is not a party to the lawsuit. Strike 3 said it would seek limited information from Verizon Fios to identify the defendant and would show good cause for the early discovery, including a preliminary showing of copyright infringement, a specific request, the lack of another way to obtain the information, the importance of the information, and the defendant’s limited privacy expectation.
Strike 3 also asked the court to postpone any initial scheduling conference until the defendant was identified and served.
Ruling
Judge Victor Marrero granted Strike 3’s request to file a motion seeking permission for a third-party subpoena under Rule 26(d)(1). The order did not itself authorize service of the subpoena. The text provided does not separately state that the request to postpone the scheduling conference was granted.
Classification
This is a procedural order because it concerns early discovery to identify an unnamed defendant and does not decide whether copyright infringement occurred.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.