Joinder: Whether the John Doe Defendants in a lawsuit should be linked together as defendant in the same lawsuit. Joinder usually relates to the question of whether they were involved in the “same transaction or occurrence.”
In many mass-IP-adrdess-based John Doe copyright infringement lawsuits, joinder is improper because the accused downloaders did not download the same copyrighted title from the same online swarm at the same time. Yet, they are thrown together in one lawsuit as co-defendants.
In a flick of the wrist and a slight of hand letter to the court, plaintiffs Dunlapp, Grubb, & Weaver (“DGW”) have possibly dismissed more accused John Doe defendants than ever before in the history of these bittorrent lawsuits. In a letter to the court titled a “Consolidated Status Report Pursuant To The Court’s Direction … Read more
UPDATE (2/2/2011): While it is generally not the policy of the blog author to update articles, I have been asked to update this article to keep the information up to date. Since writing this article, the hearing which was the subject of all the controversy has been posted on the PACER website and hopefully soon … Read more