Plaintiffs' lawyers sanctioned $81,319.72 & referred for disciplinary & criminal investigations in Ingenuity 13 v Doe

In a Los Angeles case, Ingenuity 13 LLC v. John Doe, the Court has issued sanctions in the amount of $81,319.72 against plaintiffs' attorneys, including Prenda Law, and referred them to both disciplinary and criminal authorities for further investigation. Among other things, the decision stated:

Plaintiffs have outmaneuvered the legal system. They’ve discovered the nexus of antiquated copyright laws, paralyzing social stigma, and unaffordable defense costs. And they exploit this anomaly by accusing individuals of illegally downloading a single pornographic video. Then they offer to settle—for a sum calculated to be just below the cost of a bare-bones defense. For these individuals, resistance is futile; most reluctantly pay rather than have their names associated with illegally downloading porn. So now, copyright laws originally designed to compensate starving artists allow, starving attorneys in this electronic-media era to plunder the citizenry.

and

Plaintiffs can only show that someone, using an IP address belonging to the subscriber, was seen online in a torrent swarm. But Plaintiffs did not conduct a sufficient investigation to determine whether that person actually downloaded enough data (or even anything at all) to produce a viewable video. Further, Plaintiffs cannot conclude whether that person spoofed the IP address, is the subscriber of that IP address, or is someone else using that subscriber’s Internet access.

May 6, 2013, Order Issuing Sanctions, Hon. Otis D. Wright, II, District Judge