Judge Paul Crotty
Publisher John Wiley & Sons’ three lawsuits charged 67 John Doe defendants with copyright and trademark infringement by purportedly distributing unauthorized copies of three books via BitTorrent file sharing software. In each action, Wiley sought to subpoena identifying documents from Internet service providers. The court granted Wiley’s ex parte applications only as to John Doe 1 in each lawsuit. The remaining Doe defendants were severed and the cases against them dismissed without prejudice. The court was persuaded by arguments militating against joinder. Among other things wireless routers in the majority of American homes allow a single Internet protocol address to simultaneously support multiple computers. The court also noted that by bringing only three actions instead of 67, Wiley avoids payment of mandatory filing fees in 64 of the cases, saving $22,000. The risk of potentially incentivizing plaintiffs to draw numerous innocent Internet users into litigation places an undue burden on them and weighs against joinder. Also, the differing dates and times of each John Doe defendant’s alleged sharing do not allow for an inference that they acted in concert as they did not all share the infringing works with one another.
