Purzel GMBH Lawsuit
Purzel Video GMBH (“Pruzel”) is a California pornographic film company operating from Vielsdorf, Germany. They have filed several cases in federal court in the Northern District of Illinois alleging that various “John Doe” defendants used their Internet Service Provider (“ISP”) to illegally access and/or download their pornographic content. Similar to other copyright pornography cases, Purzel claims that these defendants used software such as BitTorrent to access these movies unlawfully without paying the appropriate license fee
Typically, Purzel 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, Purzel will attempt to blindly shame the billing contact for each ISP address, relying on the certain fact of ensuing public humiliation in being tied to a pornography settlement. This shakedown tactic is unnecessarily predatory and usually results in the 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 Purzel’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.
