Perfect 10 Case Against Google Dismissed (With Prejudice) After Court Asks Perfect 10 To Open Its Books

from the a-perfect-0 dept

Thu, May 10th 2012 10:16am — Mike Masnick

In the same week that Perfect 10 sued Tumblr for alleged copyright infringement, it effectively lost one of its other key lawsuits: agreeing to a dismissal, with prejudice, in its quixotic case against Google that had so far resulted in a string of losses (and useful precedents). Part of the stipulated settlement is that Perfect 10 will never again sue Google over such claims in the past (going forward is another story).

As the TorrentFreak article linked above notes, Perfect 10 was so desperate to find some sort of evidence to use against Google, it offered $25,000 to anyone who could provide evidence that Google "aided or condoned copyright infringement." Considering how often we see people (especially in our own comments) insist that Google does this all the time, it sure seems like when it was time to present evidence no one could come up with a damn thing. And that's not surprising, because if you know anything about anything, you'd know that Google is actually pretty aggressive against infringement (sometimes over-aggressive) -- and contrary to the claims of people who seem to know nothing about online advertising, there's little money made in any advertising around infringement anyway.

What's more interesting is that, as TorrentFreak notes again, this sudden agreement to dismiss the case with prejudice comes after the court had ordered that Perfect 10 open up its books and "provide full insight into all internal communications regarding the court case." Given the accusations concerning Perfect 10's business practices (i.e., supposedly relying on such lawsuits as its business model), perhaps they felt it was better to keep that stuff from being revealed publicly.

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Filed Under: copyright infringement, settlement
Companies: google, perfect 10

17 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 10 May 2012 @ 10:20am

If Google aids copyright infringement, then so do the rest of the search engines. Where are the attacks on Yahoo, Bing etc?
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Cerberus (profile), 10 May 2012 @ 10:20am

I would like to see their books, actually. Why didn't the judge order them to open their books anyway?
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:Lobo Santo (profile), 10 May 2012 @ 10:24am

:-D
To take a line from Lethal Weapon 2:

"Big smile! Big smile! ... Big smile!"

I'm very glad to hear Google's ninja attorneys are finally earning their paychecks rather than opting for the lazy/quick 'settle out of court' route, which is ultimately futile.
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John Fenderson (profile), 10 May 2012 @ 10:37am

Re:
I'm not sure if the judge had that power in this sort of case. IANAL, but I think that maybe absent suspicion of criminality, the most a judge could do is say "open your books or lose the lawsuit," which is what he did. And Perfect 10 opted to lose the lawsuit.
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PlagueSD (profile), 10 May 2012 @ 10:40am

Google - 1
Patent Trolls - 0
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Torg (profile), 10 May 2012 @ 10:43am

"Part of the stipulated settlement is that Perfect 10 will never again sue Google over such claims in the past (going forward is another story)."

People assume that lawsuits are a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a nonlinear, non-subjective viewpoint, they're more like a big ball of wibbley-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.
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silverscarcat (profile), 10 May 2012 @ 10:43am

Of course Google's evil!
Google isn't forcing people to pay money to the MPAA and the RIAA.
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Walf.nete, 10 May 2012 @ 10:49am

Walfnete
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GMacGuffin (profile), 10 May 2012 @ 11:15am

Re:
Court basically loses jurisdiction over the party when the suit ends; so they killed the suit rather than be subject to the Order. Needed a stipulation by Google, which I'm sure they were happy to provide ... with provisions as noted.
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arcan, 10 May 2012 @ 11:48am

i guess google's argument
*put sunglasses on*
got a perfect 10.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 May 2012 @ 12:26pm

Re:
Google - 2
Patent Trolls - 0

If you take into account that the Java/Android case is going mostly in their favour.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 May 2012 @ 12:28pm

I misread the title...
...and thought Perfect 10 was opening something else. Dammit.
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Watchit (profile), 10 May 2012 @ 2:48pm

Re:
There are other search engines?
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PlagueSD (profile), 10 May 2012 @ 3:41pm

Re: Re:
"Google - 2
Patent Trolls - 0

If you take into account that the Java/Android case is going mostly in their favour."

That's like counting a goal before it's scored...

It's 1-0 right now...A very good chance it'll end up 2-0 in the near future though.
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Rekrul, 10 May 2012 @ 5:00pm

Re:
People assume that lawsuits are a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a nonlinear, non-subjective viewpoint, they're more like a big ball of wibbley-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.

Started well, that sentence... :)
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TDR, 10 May 2012 @ 6:35pm

Part of the stipulated settlement is that Perfect 10 will never again sue Google over such claims in the past (going forward is another story).

This sentence has me a little confused. Certainly the judge doesn't think the P10 execs are going to build a time-traveling DeLorean, fly into the past, and attempt to sue Google all over again? Seriously, though, might want to clarify what that sentence is supposed to mean. Or maybe it's just that I don't speak legalese.
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Anonymous Coward, 12 May 2012 @ 12:36am

Re:
That means they can't sue Google for anything that has occured prior to the exact second the judge dismissed the case with prejudice. They can still sue them for any actions that Google takes from this point on, which given they claim the infringement is ongoing would let them get back into court, at which point the judge would tell them to open they books, and history repeats.
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