A federal district judge in Ohio found that...
A federal district judge in Ohio found that Safety Point Productions, Picture Perfect Corp. and Voltage Pictures improperly joined 197 unnamed defendants in a BitTorrent copyright infringement case. The order from Judge James Gwin in Cleveland (http://bit.ly/Y8IZkb) directed the plaintiffs…
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to notify his court which defendants will remain in the suits. “Plaintiffs are directed to refile their claims against the other defendants separately and to pay the appropriate filing fees for each action,” the order said (http://bit.ly/Y8IZkb). Gwin acknowledged that courts have been split on the question of allowing such suits to be joined, known as “swarm joinder.” But he found that “participation in a specific [BitTorrent] swarm is too imprecise a factor absent additional information related to the alleged copyright infringement to support joinder."