Copyright Trolling For Dummies: Wiley Gets Default Judgment

from the books-not-to-buy dept

A little over a year ago, we noted that large publishing house John Wiley (also the plaintiff in the Kirtsaeng case that seeks to wipe out First Sale rights on many goods) was jumping into the copyright trolling game by suing a bunch of people for supposedly sharing digital copies of the company's "For Dummies" books online (though unlike other trolls, at least Wiley tried to target people who were actually in the same jurisdiction: New York). In typical copyright trolling fashion, the company was seeking that people pay up, but a few apparently ignored the whole thing, leading Wiley to score a default judgment against them. Default judgments are generally meaningless in terms of having a wider impact. It's what happens when the defendant ignores the lawsuit, and most courts just give the plaintiff everything they want (though they don't have to) and leave it to the plaintiff to figure out a way to collect.

In this case, the court has issued default judgments against Tammy Roberts and Fred Burgos. It looks like the case went more or along the lines of how copyright trolls would like: the judge allowed the subpoenas, and a few months later, Wiley amended the complaint to name names based on what it learned from the subpoenas issued to ISPs. And... just before anything else was scheduled to happen Wiley magically dismissed most of the defendants (meaning they paid up). The two exceptions were Burgos and Rogers. Wiley insists it properly served both of them, and they both ignored it -- and now the court says they need to pay $7,000 -- split up as $5,000 for copyright infringement and $2,000 for trademark infringement. This is exactly what Wiley asked for. The judge just took what they asked for and accepted it, which is unfortunately common in default judgment cases.

The trademark claim here seems especially bizarre and it's unfortunate that the judge just granted the default judgment. For it to be a trademark infringement, there needs to be a "use in commerce," and it's unclear how posting something online could be seen as a use in commerce if there was no commercial aspect to it. In the grand scheme of things, these rulings mean very little, since they're default judgments, but they'll likely be used by copyright trolls to try to justify their own actions going forward.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright trolling, default judgment, for dummies, trademark
Companies: john wiley