Troll Defense has learned that a company claiming the copyrights to the 2014 comedy film Dumb and Dumber To has filed at least two copyright actions against individual Doe parties in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon.
Dumb and Dumber To is the long-awaited sequel to the 1994 hit comedy Dumb and Dumber, and it stars Jim Carrey as Lloyd Christmas, and Jeff Daniels as Harry Dunne. Although receiving generally negative reviews from critics, the sequel performed fairly well at the box office upon its release in November 2014.
The Oregon copyright lawsuits, filed in the name of DDTo Finance LLC, allege that the defendant Does infringed the copyrights to the film by using BitTorrent software to download or upload a related file. The complaints begin by stating the overall prevalence of such activities:
DDTo comes to court seeking relief as the motion picture Dumb and Dumber To is currently one of the top 10 most downloaded movies though BitTorrent with over 1,000 confirmed infringing Internet Protocol (“IP”) addresses in Oregon alone, and DDTo is suffering notable and irreparable harm though piracy.
As with other similar lawsuits filed by DDTo’s lawyer, Carl D. Crowell of Salem, Oregon, the new actions seek statutory damages, attorney’s fees and costs and injunctive relief pursuant to the Copyright Act. Case listings with links to the complaints are here:
Case No: 3:15-cv-254
DDTo Finance, LLC v. Doe-173.8.220.78
Filed 02/12/2015
Case No: 3:15-cv-255
DDTo Finance, LLC v. Doe-24.21.211.0
Filed 02/12/2015
While only two unfortunate individuals have been targeted to date, we can only assume future lawsuits will follow shortly in Oregon and in other jurisdictions. The 1,000 “confirmed” alleged infringers in Oregon may be wondering what the likelihood is that their accounts could be implicated. At this point I can only tell them: there’s a chance.