Congratulations to our clients and to all defendants in the “CP Productions, Inc. v. Does 1-300” case (1:10-cv-06255), dismissed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. While at first glance this case appears to be a no-name media company attempting to enforce their copyrights using the mass tort copyright infringement “John Doe” model, there *is* real significance to this case.
This is one of the first cases in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois to have been dismissed. It was dismissed by Judge Milton I. Shadur, a Senior United States District Judge. More importantly, this is John Steele’s (of the Steele Law Firm LLC — now Steele Hansmeier, LLC) home court where a majority of his other cases have been filed. Have you heard any of his other cases filed there (just to name a few)?
– Millenium TGA, Inc. v. Does 1-100 (1:10-cv-05603)
– Lightspeed Media Corporation v. Does 1-100 (1:10-cv-05604)
– Hard Drive Productions, Inc. v. Does 1-1000 (1:10-cv-05606)
– First Time Videos LLC v. Does 1-500 (1:10-cv-06254)
– Future Blue, Inc. v. Does 1 – 300 (1:10-cv-06256)
– MGCIP, LLC v. Does 1-316 (1:10-cv-06677)
– MCGIP, LLC v. Does 1-1,164 (1:10-cv-07675) [no misspelling there]
– Achte/Neunte Boll Kino Beteiligungs GMBH & Co KG v. Novello (1:11-cv-00898)
– Achte/Neunte Boll Kino Beteiligungs GMBH & Co KG v. Famula (1:11-cv-00903)
As you can see, a lot is riding on these cases, and one dismissal creates a ripple effect which will likely affect the others. This is what happened in Evan Stone’s Larry Flynt Productions (LFP Internet Group, LLC) cases and related cases which were all dismissed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas all at once. Here, the judge’s order (which you can either find online or you can e-mail me) was quite explicit in his reasons for dismissing the case. No doubt the other judges for the cases I listed above will take notice of this dismissal.
For more information on the case, Ars Technica website had a nice write-up on it in their “Random defendant outlawyers P2P attorney, gets lawsuit tossed” article. The 99 comments (as of the posting of this article) are also very telling and informative.