Voltage Pictures Lawsuit
Voltage Pictures (“Voltage”) is a California based international sales, finance, and production company founded in 2005. Voltage was created by veteran sales agent and Academy Award winner Nicolas Chartier and producer Dean Devlin. For the last eight years, Voltage has created a library of over 175 film titles, including the Hurt Locker, for wich the film was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won six, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Sound, and Best Sound Editing. Devlin wrote and produced such notable blockbusters as Independence Day, Godzilla, Stargate and The Patriot. In January 2011, Chartier partnered with longtime Hollywood Gang executive Craig Flores to form Voltage Productions, an offshoot of Voltage Pictures aiming to generate films set at studios in the $15M-$40M budget range. Craig Flores previously was the executive producer of 300 and Immortals.
Typically, Voltage attempts to exploit the court’s subpoena power coupled with the infringer’s embarrassment of being a named defendant in a lawsuit associated with pornography to unfairly leverage “settlements” from Internet subscribers who may or may not unlawfully downloaded and/or accessed the pornographic films at issue. Unfortunately, the threat of pending litigation can be burdensome and costly, and innocent defendants tend to choose the “settlement” path instead of battling out their case in court. These defendants would rather not incur the ghastly time and expense of copyright litigation or face the potential embarrassment of fighting the case through various levels of the court system to hope to reach a fair judgment. Instead, they “settle” for a few thousand dollars to make the case go away and spare their name.
Similar to the trend in other “copyright troll” litigation, Voltage will attempt to blindly shame the billing contact for each ISP address, relying on the fact of ensuing public humiliation with being tied to a pornography settlement. This shakedown tactic is unnecessarily predatory and usually results in the sometimes unfairly targeted and often innocent defendants in cooperating against their will or better judgement. Federal judges often write how these “copyright trolls” bring the threat of suit but never fully intend to litigate the claims they raise. Instead these “trolls” offer an outrageous “settlement” that deters defendants from engaging in litigation to take the cheaper and quicker approach. Purzel Video has the full capacity to bring these claims to trial to attempt to win a larger judgment, or publicly humiliate the owner as a pirate pornography downloader.
If you received a notice from your ISP, or if Voltage’s representatives are attempting to contact you directly, please call The Pietz Law Firm. With a rich background and understanding of copyright infringement, we are experts in handling these types of predatory copyright cases. We have aided many clients in similar situations by successfully their dismissing their cases and by relieving much unnecessary stress. Also, please consult this article about your options in these BitTorrent lawsuits for further information regarding these copyright infringement suits.
