U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood has ruled in favor of the RIAA in its lawsuit against Lime Wire LLC, the company behind P2P client LimeWire. Wood stated Lime Wire committed copyright infringement, engaged in unfair competition, and induced copyright infringement. The company’s founder Mark Gorton was also held personally responsible. The RIAA originally filed a suit against Lime Wire in 2006, approximately 6 years after LimeWire was founded and 3 years after launching a licensed download service for several independent labels.
RIAA’s expert witness, Dr. Richard Waterman, had testified that based on random samples of files, “98.8 percent of the files requested for download through LimeWire are copyright protected or highly likely copyright protected, and thus not authorized for free distribution.”
In addition, the court had stated multiple factors including Lime Wire’s awareness of substantial infringement by users, Lime Wire’s efforts to attract infringing users through their Adwords keyword advertising campaign, and Lime Wire’s failure to mitigate infringing activities, all worked to establish that Lime Wire intended to encourage infringement through distribution of LimeWire.
While the judge did acknowledge Lime Wire’s user agreement against copyright infringement in its terms of service, the notice did not “constitute meaningful efforts to mitigate infringement.”
A hearing is scheduled in June to discuss outstanding issues in the case, including damages. The RIAA is seeking maximum statutory damages of $150,000 for each registered work that was infringed, a number that will likely run in the millions.
According to a company executive, Lime Wire is now hoping to make the shift into a for-pay music download service.
Crumpton Law LLC is a Columbus Small Business Law Firm, with attorney Matthew Crumpton serving as managing member and lead attorney.
Tags: cases, copyright, Legal News, music
