Strike 3 Holdings, LLC v. Doe
- Gregory Woods
- 1:24-cv-00641
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Strike 3 Holdings v. Doe, Judge Woods granted leave to seek early subpoena discovery and removed the scheduled pretrial conference without setting a new date.
Strike 3 Holdings, LLC may file a motion seeking permission to subpoena Spectrum for information that could identify the Doe defendant. The unidentified defendant and the scheduled pretrial conference are also affected.
What happened
Strike 3 Holdings, LLC sued an unidentified internet subscriber for alleged copyright infringement involving files shared through the BitTorrent network. The plaintiff said it knew the defendant only by an Internet Protocol address and needed the internet service provider, Spectrum, to identify the subscriber.
The plaintiff asked for permission to file a motion seeking a subpoena before the parties’ required initial discovery conference. It also asked the court to postpone the scheduled pretrial conference until the defendant was identified and served. The opinion describes the plaintiff’s intended showing that early discovery was justified, including the need for the information and the lack of another way to obtain it.
Judge Gregory H. Woods granted the plaintiff’s request for leave to file the motion seeking permission to serve the third-party subpoena. The motion was due by March 4, 2024, and the pretrial conference scheduled for March 28, 2024, was removed without a new date. The order did not decide whether the defendant infringed the copyrights.
The detailed version
- Strike 3 Holdings, LLC v. Doe · No. 1:24-cv-00641
- Gregory Woods
- Feb. 10, 2024
Background
Strike 3 Holdings, LLC alleged that an unidentified defendant used the BitTorrent file-distribution network to directly infringe the plaintiff’s copyrights. The plaintiff stated that it owned three subscription-based adult websites and the copyrights to the movies distributed through those websites. The defendant’s name and address were not known; the plaintiff identified the defendant by an Internet Protocol address assigned by the internet service provider Spectrum.
Request
Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(d)(1), discovery generally cannot be requested before the parties’ required Rule 26(f) conference unless the court permits it. Strike 3 Holdings asked for leave to file a motion seeking permission to serve Spectrum with a third-party subpoena before that conference. The plaintiff represented that the subpoena would seek information identifying the subscriber associated with the Internet Protocol address and that it would show good cause under the factors courts use in similar copyright cases. The plaintiff also requested that any initial pretrial conference be postponed until the defendant was identified and served.
Ruling
Judge Gregory H. Woods granted the plaintiff’s request for leave to file a motion seeking leave to serve the third-party subpoena under Rule 26(d)(1). The motion was due no later than March 4, 2024. The court set aside the pretrial conference scheduled for March 28, 2024, without setting a new date, and directed the Clerk of Court to terminate the motion pending at Docket Number 8. This order addressed the timing and procedure for seeking identifying discovery; it did not decide the underlying copyright-infringement claim or grant the subpoena itself.
Classification
This is a procedural order because it concerns early discovery and scheduling rather than the merits of the copyright claim.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.