A group of independent film makers has recently filed a patent infringement lawsuit against thousands of Bittorrent users who have allegedly downloaded movie files from unlicensed websites.
In an interview, Thomas Dunlap, the legal representative of the group, said that everybody with Bittorrent, a computer program that allows users to easily download large files from the Internet, is liable for patent infringement because he or she is uploader and downloader of illegal files.
Thomas, who brought the case before the US Copyright Group, said that about 10,000 people are cited in the patent infringement suit. Meanwhile, another 30,000 individuals are going to be included in the lawsuit within the next few months.
If all these litigations will take place, it will become the largest suit against file-sharers, even surpassing the number of lawsuits filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) which has charged about 30,000 downloaders during the six-year litigation campaign.
Meanwhile, Dunlap said that at least 15 individuals have settled the suit by paying an undisclosed sum of money.
According to previous reports, majority of the patent suits filed by RIAA has been settled out of court.
“I hope we will be successful just like what happened with the suits filed by RIAA”, Dunlap added.
Just recently, several courts have ordered the Internet service providers to give the identities of the alleged illegal file-sharers who have been identified by a peer-to-peer surveillance program.
When asked about the viability of the indie film makers’ legal action, Dunlap said that countless of people have already called them to settle the case out of court.