Strike 3 Holdings v. Doe
- Kenneth Karas
- 7:25-cv-07403
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Strike 3 Holdings v. John Doe, Judge Karas granted permission to seek early identity discovery and postpone the scheduling conference.
Strike 3 Holdings, LLC may pursue a motion for early discovery from Verizon Fios to identify the John Doe defendant, and the initial scheduling conference may be postponed until the defendant is identified and served.
What happened
Strike 3 Holdings, LLC sued an unidentified John Doe for allegedly using BitTorrent to infringe its copyrights. Strike 3 said it knew the defendant only by an Internet Protocol address and that Verizon Fios could identify the subscriber.
Strike 3 asked to file a motion for permission to serve Verizon Fios with a subpoena before the parties’ required discovery-planning conference. It also asked the court to postpone that conference, or not schedule it, until the defendant was identified and served.
Judge Kenneth M. Karas marked the request “Granted.” The order therefore allowed the requested next steps, but the text does not say that the subpoena itself was issued or that the court decided whether copyright infringement occurred.
The detailed version
- Strike 3 Holdings v. Doe · No. 7:25-cv-07403
- Kenneth Karas
- Sept. 19, 2025
Background
Strike 3 Holdings, LLC sued a John Doe defendant whose name and address were not known. According to Strike 3, the defendant’s Internet Protocol address had allegedly been used to infringe Strike 3’s copyrighted works through the BitTorrent file-distribution network. Strike 3 said the Internet service provider associated with the address, Verizon Fios, maintained records that could identify the customer assigned to that address.
Request
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(d)(1), discovery generally cannot begin before the parties hold a Rule 26(f) conference unless the court orders otherwise. Strike 3 asked for permission to file a motion seeking leave to serve Verizon Fios with a third-party subpoena before that conference. A subpoena is a formal demand for information or testimony from a nonparty. Strike 3 also asked to postpone any initial scheduling conference under Rule 16 until the defendant was identified and served, or to prevent the court from scheduling that conference until then.
Strike 3 stated that its planned motion would address factors courts use when considering early discovery to identify an unknown defendant, including a preliminary showing of copyright infringement, a specific discovery request, the lack of another way to obtain the information, the importance of the information, and the defendant’s limited privacy interest in the alleged distribution of copyrighted material.
Ruling
Judge Kenneth M. Karas marked the request “Granted.” Based on the text, the court granted Strike 3’s request to file the motion seeking permission for the early subpoena and its request concerning postponement of the Rule 16 scheduling conference. The order did not itself issue the subpoena, identify John Doe, or decide the underlying copyright-infringement claim.
Classification
This is a procedural order concerning discovery and scheduling. The court did not decide whether the alleged infringement occurred.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.