Strike 3 Holdings, LLC v. Doe

Background

Strike 3 Holdings, LLC brought a copyright-infringement case against a John Doe defendant whose name and address were not known. The plaintiff said it owns three subscription-based adult websites and the copyrights to the movies distributed through those websites. It alleged that the Internet Protocol address assigned to the defendant had been used to infringe its copyrighted works through the BitTorrent file-distribution network.

Request

Strike 3 filed a pre-motion request under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(d)(1). It sought permission to file a motion for leave to serve a third-party subpoena on Verizon Fios before the parties held the required Rule 26(f) conference. The requested discovery was intended to obtain the defendant’s identity from internet-service-provider records linking the Internet Protocol address to a customer.

Strike 3 also asked the court to adjourn any initial scheduling conference, or not schedule one, until the defendant was identified and served. The plaintiff argued that early discovery was justified because it would present an initial showing of copyright infringement, make a specific discovery request, show that no alternative way existed to obtain the identity, establish a central need for the information, and show that the defendant had only a limited expectation of privacy.

Ruling

The court marked the request “GRANTED.” It directed the clerk to terminate the pending motion at docket entry 6. The order therefore granted Strike 3’s request to proceed with filing a motion seeking leave for the third-party subpoena and to delay the scheduling process as requested.

The opinion text does not state that the court itself granted leave to serve the subpoena, that Verizon Fios was required to disclose information, or that the defendant’s identity was revealed. This was a discovery-related procedural order rather than a decision resolving whether copyright infringement occurred.