U.S. Judge Dismisses “Copyright Shakedown” of Foreign Video Sites

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Tube sites EmpFlix and TNAflix, which grew out of the famous BitTorrent trackers Empornium and PureTNA, were targeted in 2011 by an adult rightsholder company in a copyright case. If successful it could have seen the sites losing their domains and being shut down. However, in a case described by their lawyers as “higher-end versions” of the current wave of BitTorrent troll suits, the non-US based sites have just come out the winners after a U.S. judge dismissed the case...

Despite accepting that TNAflix, Empflix and Youngtek had “intentionally infringed Fraserside’s registered copyrights and trademarks”, in a ruling handed down yesterday District Court Judge Mark W. Bennett decided in favor of Youngtek and granted the company’s motion to dismiss.

“Youngtek is a Cyprus based company. Youngtek has no offices in Iowa, no employees in Iowa, no telephone number in Iowa, and no agent for service of process in Iowa. No Youngtek officer or director has ever visited Iowa,” the Judge began.

“Youngtek does not maintain any of its servers in Iowa. Youngtek’s complete absence of contacts with the State of Iowa is the antithesis of the type of continuous and systematic contacts necessary for exercising general personal jurisdiction over it,” he added.

Judge Bennett said that the sale of a single three-day pass to one user did not demonstrate “intentional, continuous, and substantial contacts with Iowa”, adding that Fraserside had failed to show that Iowa courts have general jurisdiction over Youngtek.

So what about the millions of visits to the sites from Iowa users? Still no good according to the Court.

“Fraserside has offered no materials whatsoever to support its assertion that visitors to Youngtek’s websites from the United States have uploaded, downloaded, or viewed Fraserside’s films,” Judge Bennett wrote, adding that no evidence had been presented to show that Youngtek bought its domains through a US company either.

“Fraserside’s utter lack of any evidentiary materials to support its assertions is particularly surprising since Fraserside’s submission comes after over six months of jurisdictional discovery,” he added.

Judge Bennett concluded by stating that the maintenance of the lawsuit would “offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice” and dismissed the case.

http://torrentfreak.com/judge-dismisses-u-s-copyright-shakedown-of-foreign-video-sites-120111/