On September 27, the U.S. District Court hearing the remand of the Grokster case issued an opinion holding StreamCast (the sole remaining defendant in the case) liable for secondary copyright infringement under the “inducement” theory articulated in Grokster.

The outcome is really not a surprise. The Supreme Court had signaled pretty clearly that the combination of facts of the case appeared to provide ample basis for liability.

The new lower court decision, however, contains some passages that could be misused if cited out of context in future cases interpreting Grokster. Our quick take on the new decision is here. We continue to believe that a careful reading of Grokster implies a number of significant limits on the scope of secondary liability for copyright infringement, as set forth in our article in the Stanford Technology Law Review. Whether courts articulate and observe those limits in future cases will help determine whether the Grokster framework achieves its intended balance between punishing culpable behavior and protecting innovators from the chilling effect of excessive litigation risk.

UPDATE — We have put together an overview of post-Grokster legal developments.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 10th, 2006 at 5:43 pm and is filed under Digital Copyright. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.