Corey Sipkin Photography LLC v. The Arena Group Holdings, Inc.
- Lewis Liman
- 1:23-cv-04754
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Corey Sipkin Photography LLC v. ABC Corp., Judge Liman granted limited early discovery to identify the website’s owner or operator.
Corey Sipkin Photography LLC may serve The Arena Group Holdings, Inc. with a limited subpoena seeking information identifying the owner or operator of the Fadeaway World website. The order did not decide the copyright claim or identify that owner or operator.
What happened
In Corey Sipkin Photography LLC v. ABC Corp. d/b/a Fadeaway World, the plaintiff said three copyrighted photographs had been copied and displayed without permission on the Fadeaway World website. The plaintiff had previously sued The Arena Group Holdings, Inc., but later replaced it with an unidentified company, ABC Corp., and voluntarily dismissed Arena Group from the case.
The plaintiff asked to serve Arena Group with a subpoena before the parties’ required discovery-planning conference. It sought information identifying the website’s owner or operator, saying that information was unavailable from other sources and was needed to move the copyright case forward.
Judge Lewis J. Liman granted the motion, but only to allow service of a subpoena on Arena Group for identifying information about the website’s owner or operator. The court directed the Clerk of Court to close the motion docket entry.
The detailed version
- Corey Sipkin Photography LLC v. The Arena Group Holdings, Inc. · No. 1:23-cv-04754
- Lewis Liman
- Oct. 17, 2023
Background
Corey Sipkin Photography LLC owns rights to photographs and licenses them for online and print publication. It alleged that three photographs of professional basketball players, first published in March 2021, May 2021, and December 2021, were copied and displayed without permission on the website at fadeawayworld.net.
The plaintiff originally sued The Arena Group Holdings, Inc. (Arena Group), alleging that Arena Group owned and operated the website and was responsible for its content. The plaintiff later filed an amended complaint naming ABC Corp. doing business as Fadeaway World as the website’s owner and operator, and it voluntarily dismissed Arena Group as a defendant. The plaintiff then sought information from Arena Group to identify the actual owner or operator.
Motion and legal standard
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(d)(1), parties generally may not seek discovery before the required conference between the parties unless the court allows it. Courts apply a flexible good-cause standard. The court considered whether the plaintiff showed a plausible copyright-infringement claim, whether its request was specific, whether other ways existed to obtain the information, whether the information was needed to advance the claim, and whether the website owner had a privacy interest in the information.
The court found that the plaintiff adequately alleged the two elements needed for an initial copyright-infringement showing: ownership of valid copyrights and copying of original elements of the works. It also found the request specific because it was limited to documents and information identifying the website’s owner or operator. The plaintiff had represented that it had no alternative way to obtain the information, and the court found the information necessary to move the case forward. The court also found that the website owner appeared to have no privacy expectation in information about the website’s ownership.
Ruling
Judge Lewis J. Liman granted the motion limited to serving a subpoena on Arena Group for identifying information about the website’s owner or operator. The Clerk of Court was directed to close the docket entry for the motion. The order did not determine who owned or operated the website or decide the copyright claim on its merits.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.