Some thoughts on Malibu Media’s recent loss and its implications

(Malibu Media LLC v. Doe, Docket No. 1:13-cv-06312 (N.D. Ill. Sept 04, 2013)

Malibu Media’s case against yet another John Doe defendant was tossed out of court on February 8th by United States Magistrate Judge Geraldine Soat Brown.

Malibu v. Doe, Memorandum, Opinion and Order of Feb 8, 2016 

The defendant in this case prevailed in summary judgement because Malibu was unable to establish that he had ever used Bittorrent or that it’s films had ended up on his hard drive. Malibu had been relying on experts from its technology vendor, but it failed to follow the rules with respect to follow the rules on disclosure of expert witnesses. (See, Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(a)(2)). Malibu also tried to add vital paragraphs containing new opinions to another witness’ original declaration in a manner not permitted by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

On the surface, the loss does not appear to have broad implications for Malibu Media’s campaign against illegal file sharing; after all, it should not be too hard to avoid these particular procedural slip-ups in the future.

Maybe, maybe not?

Malibu is engaged in a litigation campaign of  unprecedented scope — last year Malibu Media alone was responsible for 39% of all copyright litigation in the US. (See  Matthew Sag, IP Litigation in United States District Courts—2015 Update (January 5, 2016). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2711326.)   John Doe litigation, by Malibu Media and others, made up almost 58% of the federal copyright docket (2930 cases out of 5076) in 2015. Malibu’s recent loss in the Northern District of Illinois illustrates, yet again, how ill suited federal court litigation is to resolving what should be relatively low stakes copyright disputes.

It is time for an entirely new forum to deal with the routine infringements that occur on BitTorrent and similar networks. The Copyright Office has suggested a small claims court for copyright but we probably need something far more targeted.