No fees for you

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Jan. 4 that a man who didn’t respond to record companies’ efforts to contact him about the alleged copyright infringement of their music is not entitled to attorney’s fees, even though he is the prevailing party in the suit the companies filed against him. According to the per curiam opinion in Virgin Records America, Inc., et al. v. Cliff Thompson, the record companies spent six months trying to contact Thompson after determining that someone using his Internet account allegedly used a file-sharing program to illegally distribute copies of their records. In 2006, the companies sued Thompson in the U.S. District Court for the Western District in San Antonio. As noted in the 5th Circuit’s opinion, Thompson filed an answer and a counterclaim requesting attorney’s fees and accusing the companies of engaging in “sue first, talk later” litigation. After the companies moved to dismiss the counterclaim, Thompson revealed in his response to the motion that the person most likely to have downloaded the companies’ music was his adult daughter, but he refused to disclose her name, the 5th Circuit noted in the opinion.  Through their own efforts, the companies identified Thompson’s daughter and moved to dismiss the suit, but Thompson reiterated his demand for attorney’s fees. In a November 2006 order, U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia dismissed the suit against Thompson but denied his request for attorney’s fees, finding that the companies’ bringing the suit was proper. The 5th Circuit agreed.
-- Mary Alice Robbins