Bit Parts

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld sanctions against John Deep for failure to shut down his Aimster peer-to-peer file-sharing network. In Re: Aimster Copyright Litigation, 03-2188. The district court had issued an injunction ordering Deep to either block infringing uses or stop operating Aimster pending resolution of the music industry's copyright infringement suit against the service. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. But the district court fined Deep $5000 and ordered him to pay more than $100,000 of the plaintiffs' attorney fees for violating the injunction. In its latest ruling, the Seventh Circuit noted that Deep “admitted in the district court that, since he was unable (he claimed) to block infringing uses, he had to shut his service down. He did not do so. The excuses he offers for his contumacy are unpersuasive, indeed frivolous. As the plaintiffs point out, he has engaged in vexatious litigation in several courts in an effort to avoid complying with the injunction, as well as skipping hearings in the district court and engaging in a variety of stall tactics.” Only a few days before the Seventh Circuit affirmed the sanctions, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Deep's petition for a writ of certiorari from relief from the injunction. Deep v. Recording Industry Association, 03-658.

'Peacemaker' Ruling

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided that the district court didn't abuse its discretion in denying a discovery motion by the plaintiffs in a copyright infringement suit over the film “The Peacemaker.” Idema v. Dreamworks Inc., 01-57243. According to the appeals court, “The district court accepted Defendants' concession (made for the purpose of summary judgment only) that they had access to Plaintiffs' works, so the additional evidence of access that was sought was not required at that stage of the litigation.” In the unpublished opinion, the appeals court went on to uphold the lower court's denial of the plaintiffs' request to file a third amended complaint after the court had entered summary judgment. Then, after reviewing “in painstaking detail” the plaintiffs' works and the defendants' film, the appeals court concluded that there was no substantial similarity of ideas and expression. “To the extent that there are similarities, many of them relate to historical facts, which are not themselves subject to copyright protection, or to stock characters and scenes a faire,” the appeals court stated. “The remaining similarities are not substantial, and the differences between the film and Plaintiffs' eight works are extensive.”

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