Siemens Product Lifecycle Management Software, Inc. has filed a lawsuit against 100 anonymous Doe parties, alleging infringement of various forms of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software for which Siemens holds copyrights.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Sherman Division, with Case No. 4:15-cv-00017 , says that the PLM software:

…allows companies to manage the entire lifecycle of a product efficiently and cost-effectively, from ideation, design and manufacture, through service and disposal. PLM software brings together computer-aided design (“CAD”), computer-aided manufacturing (“CAM”), computer-aided engineering (“CAE”), product data management  (“PDM”) and digital manufacturing. By providing the application depth and breadth needed to digitally author, validate and manage the detailed product and process data, PLM supports innovation by its customers.

Among the works claimed to be infringed are several versions of a suite known as “NX,” as well as several versions of “SolidEdge,” which is described as “an industry-leading mechanical design system with exceptional tools for creating and managing 3D digital prototypes.”

As for the Does, they are described as being unknown aside from a related IP address.  The infringing conduct is vaguely described, with the Does alleged to have used “a computer with an Internet connection to download and/or use certain of the Copyrighted Software,” without any indication whether the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol was involved.

The Siemens lawsuit is not entirely clear as to why this particular venue was selected.  It is commonly presumed that a good share of the infringement of highly valuable commercial software occurs in foreign countries.  Also, as a result of a number of federal court decisions over the past few years made in BitTorrent lawsuits, new filings are typically located in a district to which geolocation software has traced a suspect group of IP addresses engaged in file-sharing activity, and the courts have generally accepted that geolocation software is accurate.  The Siemens complaint makes allegations regarding personal jurisdiction and venue that are fairly vague and stated “on information and belief,” with no mention of geolocation.

However,  the Eastern District has been known for several years as a plaintiff-friendly hotbed for patent infringement filings, the New York Times has reported.  According to another report on the District, patent infringement plaintiffs win cases there at a rate of 88%, as opposed to 68% nationwide.

On August 27, 2015, Siemens filed a second, virtually identical lawsuit against another 100 Does in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Sherman Division, with Case No. 4:15-cv-00582.

UPDATE (6/13/16): Siemens filed yet another similar case against another 100 Does, this time in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, based in Houston, with Case No. 4:16-cv-01422.

UPDATE (1/7/17): Siemens filed yet another similar case against another 100 Does in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, with Case No. 4:16-cv-03552.

UPDATE (8/11/17): Siemens filed yet another similar case against another 93 Does in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, with Case No. 4:17-cv-01796.

 

Nationwide copyright enforcer Dallas Buyers Club, LLC has made a return to filing several new matters in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, starting with a round filed in late November 2014 and others just this month.

This re-emergence may be surprising to some observers, after Dallas Buyers Club’s wavering, strategic delays and abrupt abandonment of a case in the same District Court last August were met with a stern order from the Court, as reported by Fight Copyright Trolls.  However, that order apparently did not deter the continued prosecution of several cases there in the following months.

The more recent case numbers are listed below, with links to some of the complaints.

Case No. 4:15-cv-47
Dallas Buyers Club, LLC v. Does 1-12
Filed 01/09/2015

Case No. 4:15-cv-50
Dallas Buyers Club, LLC v. Does 1-19
Filed 01/09/2015

Case No. 4:15-cv-44
Dallas Buyers Club, LLC v. Does 1-7
Filed 01/09/2015

Case No. 4:15-cv-46
Dallas Buyers Club, LLC v. Does 1-11
Filed 01/09/2015

Case No. 4:15-cv-49
Dallas Buyers Club, LLC v. Does 1-13
Filed 01/09/2015

Case No. 4:14-cv-3388
Dallas Buyers Club, LLC v. Does 1-14
Filed 11/25/2014

Case No. 4:14-cv-3394
Dallas Buyers Club, LLC v. Does 1-25
Filed 11/25/2014

Case No. 4:14-cv-3387
Dallas Buyers Club, LLC v. Does 1-10
Filed 11/25/2014

Case No. 4:14-cv-3389
Dallas Buyers Club, LLC v. Does 1-18
Filed 11/25/2014

Case No. 4:14-cv-3393
Dallas Buyers Club, LLC v. Does 1-19
Filed 11/25/2014

A Washington firm specializing in video-based simulation exams for public safety officials has filed suit in a New Jersey federal court for copyright infringement of an examination intended to be used for the New Jersey State Police to evaluate its police officer candidates.

Ergometrics & Applied Personnel Research, Inc. is the owner of copyrights to “FrontLine,” an exam which is said to consist of “54 videotaped police-related scenarios,” which are viewed by police officer candidates who are then asked to quickly answer multiple choice questions about the best way for an officer to handle the scenarios.  The defendants in the action are Dr. Jeff Bernstein and a corporation doing business as “Bernstein Test Prep,” which “offers instructional courses and course material intended to prepare candidates to take the NJSP Exam and similar police screening exams nationwide,” according to the complaint filed in the action.

The details regarding the defendants’ access to the materials set forth in the complaint are somewhat unclear.  The plaintiff Ergometrics alleges:

On information and belief, Defendants obtained access to the FrontLine video material by breaching and/or inducing other to breach the examination’s confidentiality, by recreating the video scenarios, and/or through other unlawful means.

As in many copyright cases, proof of infringement would require showing not only access but also substantial similarity between FrontLine and the products or other works offered by the defendants.  On this score, the plaintiff claims:

20. In October 2014, the New Jersey State Police provided Ergometrics with a copy of the “Bernstein & Associates, Inc.” preparation guide for the NJSP Exam, entitled “State Trooper Entry Exam Review for New Jersey State Police Candidates” (the “Bernstein Guide”). An exam candidate and JBA customer brought this copy of the Bernstein Guide to a session of the August 17, 2014, administration of the NJSP Exam and, when questioned about the document, provided it to an exam proctor.

21. On information and belief, Defendants are responsible for publishing and distributing the Bernstein Guide to its customers, who pay $599 each for Defendant’s NJSP Exam seminar and course material.

22. Upon review of the Bernstein Guide, Ergometrics discovered that the guide misappropriates and discloses proprietary and copyrighted FrontLine material. Without limitation, the Bernstein Guide contains worksheets revealing the content of 43 of the 54 FrontLine video scenarios and the answers thereto.

The question of similarity between the test and test-prep materials raised by the lawsuit calls to mind a seminal copyright case, Educational Testing Services v. Katzman, 793 F.2d 533 (3rd Cir.1986), which also involved claims between the developer of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and a test preparation company, Princeton Review, which offered SAT prep materials.  In the Katzman case, the plaintiff alleged that the defendants “distributed ‘facsimile’ SATs that contained ‘verbatim or nearly verbatim’ SAT questions.”

The Ergometrics case seems to pose a more difficult question on the issue of similarity, as the plaintiff alleges that the defendants’ Guide “contains worksheets revealing the content of” the FrontLine video scenarios.  Thus, it would appear that the two works are not of the same nature: the copyright registration attached to the complaint refers to the nature of FrontLine as a “motion picture,” while the defendants’ Guide would typically be considered  a “literary” work.

If Ergometrics’ theory holds in court, one could ponder whether the many online written accounts revealing plot developments in recent episodes of popular television shows–hopefully accompanied by a prominent “SPOILER ALERT” warning–could be considered infringements of the visual arts copyrights which would apply to the show. In any event, it will be intriguing to see how this matter plays out.

Mass copyright enforcer Dallas Buyers Club, LLC continues a busy year with a new suit against unknown Does in Seattle’s federal courthouse, this time upping the ante to 35 defendants.  For better or for worse, this unfortunate group of ISP subscribers is unlikely to get a subpoena notice sent to their humble abodes until after the New Year, however.

As in previous multi-Doe suits filed in this Court, Dallas Buyers Club spends a good deal of time on a discussion of permissive joinder. Specifically, it alleges that:

…The temporal proximity of the observed acts of each Defendant, together with the known propensity of BitTorrent participants to actively exchange files continuously for hours and even days, makes it possible that Defendants either directly exchanged the motion picture with each other, or did so through intermediaries and each shared in the distribution of the motion picture to others. Therefore, Defendants each conspired with other infringers on the BitTorrent network to copy and/or distribute Dallas Buyers Club, either in the same transaction or occurrence or a series of transactions or occurrences.

The case was filed by attorney David A. Lowe of Lowe Graham Jones PLLC. The case names, together with links to complaints, are as follows:

Dallas Buyers Club, LLC v. Does 1-35, No.2:14-cv-01926 (W.D. Wash)

 

Troll Defense has observed the filing of numerous single-Doe BitTorrent copyright cases in Colorado and Michigan by Good Man Productions, Inc.  The cases are based on the 2014 Steven Seagal action vehicle A Good Man.  This marks at the least the second time a Seagal picture has been placed into mass copyright litigation, following the 2013 round of multi-Doe lawsuits filed by Voltage Pictures, LLC in regard to the Seagal/Steve Austin shooter Maximum Conviction.  It’s too bad Mr. Seagal reportedly also missed out of the Expendables franchise (via The Mirror), although it is impressive he can still be billed as an action star at age 62.

DieTrollDie has some interesting details regarding the Good Man Productions lawsuits, including the potential connection between the “infringement detection company” named in the lawsuits, Excipio GmbH, and the X-Art/Malibu Media mass litigation enterprise.

An exemplary complaint from one of the Colorado actions, filed by attorney Jason Kotzer of Kotzer Law Group, is here.

As Troll Defense earlier reported, the owners to the rights to the film Dallas Buyers Club are prosecuting in Oregon U.S. District Court many “singleton” lawsuits against Doe parties, alleging both federal Copyright Act and Oregon State Trademark violations.  Voltage Pictures, LLC and co-plaintiff Dallas Buyers Club, LLC combine the copyright infringement claims of Dallas Buyers Club, LLC with the claims of Voltage for violations of the Oregon Trademark Act, ORS 647.

Just last week, these plaintiffs filed a batch of new complaints.  The new case captions (with links to complaints) are as follows:

Voltage Pictures, LLC et al v. Doe-24.21.103.107, Case No. 3:14-cv-1780

Voltage Pictures, LLC et al v. Doe-50.139.49.233, Case No. 3:14-cv-1781

Voltage Pictures, LLC et al v. Doe-74.92.164.133, Case No. 3:14-cv-1782

Voltage Pictures, LLC et al v. Doe-98.232.237.231, Case No. 6:14-cv-1783

Voltage Pictures, LLC et al v. Doe-24.21.216.109, Case No. 6:14-cv-1784

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., the developer of popular PC game franchises including “World of Warcraft,” “Starcraft” and “Diablo,” is now in the business of anonymous copyright litigation.

Earlier this year, Blizzard filed a 20-page complaint against 10 Doe parties alleging violations of the Copyright Act, “Trafficking in Circumvention Devices” under Section 1201 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), breach of contract, and interference with contractual relations.  The case involves “StarCraft II,” which is, according to Bizzard’s complaint, “one of the most popular PC software products currently sold in the United States and is one of the most critically acclaimed computer games ever released.”

The complaint alleges that the Doe defendants are hackers who have developed and distributed online “unlawful hacks and cheats” that allow game players to gain competitive advantages (i.e. to cheat) during StarCraft II gameplay.  Specifically, the complaint alleges that the Does developed and sold a software product called “ValiantChaos MapHack” (VCMH) that:

…permits its user to view areas of the game “map” that are normally obscured, to monitor the other player’s unit movements, and to access other information that normally is not available to the player. VCMH also automates certain tasks within the game. These gameplay changes give the player using VCMH a significant competitive advantage over others.

Blizzard further alleges that VCMH and related hacks are circumventing a proprietary software program called “Warden” that “enforces Blizzard’s rights by running targeted scans of the user’s environment for the presence and/or use of ‘signatures’ of known unauthorized third party programs that facilitate cheating or allow the modification of the StarCraft II interface, environment, and/or experience in any way not authorized by Blizzard.”  Blizzard also claims that the use of VMCH violates the Terms of Use and End User License Agreement (“EULA”) that all StarCraft II players must accept.

Allegedly, the ultimate harm to Blizzard resulting from the distribution of VCMH and similar software is that non-cheating players become fed up with their online gaming experience and cease participating and purchasing “expansion” packs.

The Copyright Act violations are intriguing, and include both an allegation of copying and creating unauthorized derivative works:

Such infringing conduct includes, but is not limited to copying and adapting StarCraft II to create the Hacks (including through the process of reverse engineering or decompiling StarCraft II to create the Hacks); and creating a derivative work of StarCraft II by modifying it via the installation and use of the Hacks.

According to the electronic docket, the case remains pending.  The most recent docket entry suggests that Blizzard was granted the right to seek discovery from PayPal about the identity of purchasers and sellers of VCMH and related products.

Multi-state litigant Dallas Buyers Club, LLC continues its BitTorrent copyright assault, this time filing three lawsuits against 30 Doe parties in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.

Troll Defense was somewhat surprised to see another multi-Doe pleading filed by the owner of copyrights in the film Dallas Buyers Club, given at least a few different decisions by multiple courts in the recent months on grounds of improper joinder.  Most notably, as earlier reported, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in May that the joinder of many different “John Doe” parties into a single action, for purposes of obtaining early discovery of the Does’ identities, is improper when the only basis for joinder is their common participation in a BitTorrent swarm.  Closer to the venue, the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon also determined that joiner of 50 different Does in a single action–incidentally, a case involving Dallas Buyers Club producer Voltage Pictures, LLC–was improper.

This time, as if to ward off anticipated joinder challenges, Dallas Buyers Club has dedicated several pages of its form of complaints to a discussion of permissive joinder.  Specifically, it alleges that:

 The temporal proximity of the observed acts of each Defendant, together with the known propensity of BitTorrent participants to actively exchange files continuously for hours and even days, makes it possible that Defendants either directly exchanged the motion picture with each other, or did so through intermediaries and each shared in the distribution of the motion picture to others. Therefore, Defendants each conspired with other infringers on the BitTorrent network to copy and/or distribute Dallas Buyers Club, either in the same transaction or occurrence or a series of transactions or occurrences.

The cases were filed by attorney David A. Lowe of Lowe Graham Jones PLLC.   The case names, together with links to complaints, are as follows:

Dallas Buyers Club, LLC v. Does 1-10, No. 2:14-cv-01402 (W.D. Wash)

Dallas Buyers Club, LLC v. Does 1-10, No. 2:14-cv-01153 (W.D. Wash)

Dallas Buyers Club, LLC v. Does 1-10, No. 2:14-cv-01136 (W.D. Wash)

 

The owners to the rights to the acclaimed film Dallas Buyers Club are back in Oregon U.S. District Court with a batch of “singleton” lawsuits against Doe parties, alleging both federal Copyright Act and Oregon State Trademark violations.

As Troll Defense earlier reported, Voltage Pictures, LLC teamed with another production company to bring combination copyright-trademark suits based on The Company You Keep.

This time, joining Voltage as co-plaintiff is Dallas Buyers Club, LLC, the purported owner of copyrights to the award-winning film.   The new Oregon cases combine the copyright infringement claims of Dallas Buyers Club, LLC with the claims of Voltage for violations of the Oregon Trademark Act, ORS 647.

The new copyright claims contain an “ALTERNATE THEORY – INDIRECT INFRINGEMENT,” which alleges that “Defendant obtained Internet access through an ISP and permitted, facilitated and promoted the use of the Internet access for the infringing of DBC’s exclusive rights under The Copyright Act by others.”  The complaints also contain some factual allegations which appear intended to account for the fact that investigations of BitTorrent activities often do not reveal who the individual BitTorrent user may be.  For example, it is alleged that:

20. Defendant’s IP address has been observed as associated with the peer-to-peer exchange of hundreds of copyrighted titles through the BitTorrent network, a record of which can be filed with the Court on request.

21. The volume and titles of the activity associated with defendant’s IP address indicates that the defendant is likely the primary subscriber of the IP address or someone who resides with the subscriber, as such activity indicates the defendant is an authorized user of the IP address with permissive access.

22. The volume of the activity associated with defendant’s IP address indicates that anyone using or observing activity on the IP address would likely be aware of the conduct of the defendant.

23. The volume and titles of the activity associated with defendant’s IP address indicates that the defendant is not a young child, but an adult with mature tastes.

The known case captions (with links to complaints) are as follows:

Voltage Pictures, LLC v. Doe-50.186.3.248, Case No. 6:14-cv-1405

Voltage Pictures, LLC v. Doe-24.22.71.110, Case No. 6:14-cv-1406

Voltage Pictures, LLC v. Doe-67.189.16.171, Case No. 3:14-cv-1407

Voltage Pictures, LLC v. Doe-98.232.236.10, Case No. 6:14-cv-1408

Voltage Pictures, LLC v. Doe-74.92.171.141, Case No. 3:14-cv-1409

Some weeks after a batch of its Oregon state trademark lawsuits arising from Dallas Buyers Club were dismissed for improper joinder, Voltage has returned to the U.S. District Court in Oregon with at least two “singleton” lawsuits against Doe parties.  This time the cases are based on The Company You Keep, a 2012 political thriller starring Robert Redford.

This time, joining Voltage as co-plaintiff is TCYK, LLC, the purported owner of copyrights to the film.  TCYK is known for previously filing many copyright infringement lawsuits in the federal courts of Illinois, Indiana, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Ohio, Tennessee, and Wisconsin.

The new Oregon cases combine the copyright infringement claims of TCYK with the claims of Voltage for violations of the Oregon Trademark Act, ORS 647.  After Voltage’s state trademark lawsuits related to Dallas Buyers Club were removed to the federal court, about two months ago, Troll Defense previously speculated that Voltage might choose to utilize the federal court’s jurisdiction to amend the complaints and add claims under the Copyright Act.

An interesting aspect of the new copyright claims is that they contain an “ALTERNATE THEORY – INDIRECT INFRINGEMENT,” which alleges that:

61. Defendant obtained Internet access through an ISP and permitted, facilitated and promoted the use of the Internet access for the infringing of TCYK, LLC’s exclusive rights under The Copyright Act by others.

62. Defendant failed to reasonably secure, police and protect the use of their Internet service against use for improper purposes such as piracy, including the downloading and sharing of the motion picture by others.

63. Defendant’s failure was with notice as piracy is in violation of the license for access granted to defendant by their ISP which issued defendant an IP address to access the internet.

64. Defendant’s failure was with notice as the volume of activity associated with IP address [ ] is such that defendant either knew of or should have known of the infringing activity.

These allegations appear intended to address the enduring challenge for copyright plaintiffs associated with the fact that investigation of BitTorrent activities often do not reveal who the individual BitTorrent user may be.  This “alternate theory” seems to account for the lack of specificity in the investigation and the frequent scenario where the ISP subscriber is not the actual infringer.

The known case captions (with links to complaints) are as follows:

Voltage Pictures, LLC et al v. Doe-76.105.157.206, Case No. 3:14-cv-01191 (D. Or.)

Voltage Pictures, LLC et al v. Doe-50.141.98.1, Case No. 6:14-cv-01193 (D. Or.)