Judge Orders Perfect 10 to Pay Giganews $5.6 Million in Legal Fees and Costs for Meritless Copyright Infringement Lawsuit

03/25/2015

This news item is older than six months. Information presented here may no longer reflect current Giganews services or offers.

The Ruling Represents a Victory for Usenet and a Deterrent Against Meritless Copyright Lawsuits

Austin, Texas – March 25, 2015 - Giganews, the world's premium Usenet access provider, announced today that the United States District Court for the Central District of California has ordered Perfect 10 to pay more than $5.6 million in attorney's fees and costs to Giganews. The court considered many factors in making the ruling, including the totality of Giganews legal victories and the motivation of Perfect 10's lawsuit. It concluded that awarding fees would "discourage serial litigants from bringing unmeritorious suits and then unnecessarily driving up litigation costs in order to drive a settlement."

Perfect 10 initially brought suit against Giganews in April 2011 for copyright infringement, trademark infringement, trademark dilution, unfair competition, and violation of Perfect 10's right of publicity. Giganews secured a series of court victories during the long-running legal dispute, with the court ultimately dismissing all of the allegations and rejecting all the different theories and claims that Perfect 10 had asserted.

"This judgment is a complete victory for Giganews, a validation of Usenet as one of the foundational protocols of the Internet, and a recognition of the users who rely on it every day," said Ron Yokubaitis, Co-founder of Giganews. In granting Giganews' motion for legal fees, the court recognized, "the Usenet services the defendants offer serve to foster an exchange of information or opinion on a particular topic from, say, the music of Wagner to Balkan politics to AIDS prevention to the Chicago Bulls," and the Court took the position that Perfect 10's "unmeritorious claims against the leading Usenet service provider in the country posed a serious threat to the public's access to free and competitive expression."

Yokubaitis continued, "Online service providers and Internet companies are under assault from copyright trolls like Perfect 10, but we have followed the DMCA since its inception, and are proud to have stood up to the meritless claims of a serial litigator who was hoping for an easy pay day." The court noted, "Perfect 10 has a long, documented history of sending service providers inadequate takedown notices under the DMCA that fail to identify specific infringing material, and then bringing suit for the service providers' failure to respond to deficient DMCA takedown notices." As part of ultimately deciding the need for the large monetary award, the court concluded, "all of the evidence before the Court demonstrates that Perfect 10 is in the business of litigation, not protecting its copyrights or stimulating artistic creativity for the general public good."

Leading up to this judgment Giganews had presented the court with extensive evidence against Perfect 10, showing discovery noncompliance, numerous violations of court orders, and pervasive failures by Perfect 10, its attorneys and its witnesses.

Copies of Tuesday's findings are available here: https://truck.it/p/k5p0b1mCCx

About Giganews

Giganews, the world's largest and most trusted Usenet provider for more than a decade, offers unparalleled newsgroup access through a proprietary, scalable platform designed to maximize speed and reliability. Giganews serves individuals, as well as the largest Internet service providers, telecommunications companies, and multi-service providers in more than 200 countries, making it the top Usenet aggregation point in the world. More articles pass through Giganews on a daily basis than any other provider. In addition, the Giganews Newsgroups Archive hosts more than 12 billion articles requiring several petabytes (PB) of storage. Learn more about Giganews at http://www.giganews.com.

Giganews is a trademark of Giganews, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.