Strike 3 Holdings, LLC v. Doe
- Louis Stanton
- 1:23-cv-11218
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Strike 3 Holdings v. Doe, Judge Stanton received a request for early subpoena discovery to identify the defendant; the text shows no ruling.
Strike 3 Holdings, LLC and the unidentified John Doe defendant, whose identity the plaintiff seeks to obtain from Spectrum.
What happened
Strike 3 Holdings, LLC asked to learn the identity of a defendant known only by an Internet Protocol address. It said the defendant used the BitTorrent network to infringe its copyrighted works.
The plaintiff sought permission to request a subpoena to Spectrum, the internet provider, before the required discovery-planning conference. It also asked to postpone any initial scheduling conference until the defendant was identified and served.
The provided text is a letter from the plaintiff’s lawyer, not a court order. Judge Stanton’s ruling is not included, so the text does not show whether the requests were granted or denied.
The detailed version
- Strike 3 Holdings, LLC v. Doe · No. 1:23-cv-11218
- Louis Stanton
- Jan. 26, 2024
Nature of the document
The provided text is a letter from Strike 3 Holdings, LLC’s lawyer to Judge Louis L. Stanton. It asks for permission to file a motion seeking early discovery; it does not contain a ruling by the court.
Background
Strike 3 Holdings alleged that a John Doe defendant used the BitTorrent file-distribution network to directly infringe the company’s copyrights. The plaintiff said it knew the defendant only by an Internet Protocol address and that the internet provider, Spectrum, could use that address and its records to identify the subscriber. The plaintiff also said such records may be kept only for a short time.
The letter states that Strike 3 Holdings owns three subscription-based adult websites and the copyrights to the movies distributed by those websites. It sought to identify the defendant in a copyright-infringement action.
Request
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(d)(1), discovery generally cannot begin before the parties’ required Rule 26(f) conference without a court order. Strike 3 Holdings asked to file a motion for permission to serve a third-party subpoena on Spectrum before that conference. The requested discovery was aimed at obtaining the defendant’s name and address.
The plaintiff also asked the court to postpone any initial scheduling conference, or not schedule one, until the defendant was identified and served. The letter argued that early discovery was justified because the plaintiff would show a preliminary copyright-infringement claim, make a specific request, show that no alternative way existed to obtain the information, establish the importance of the information, and show that the defendant had only a limited expectation of privacy.
Disposition
The provided text does not state that Judge Stanton granted, denied, or otherwise decided either request. No court disposition can be determined from this text.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.