Personal Jurisdiction and Joinder in Mass Copyright Troll Litigation

Jason R. LaFond

A copyright troll, roughly defined, is a person or entity that acquires a (usually narrow) license from an original copyright holder for the sole purpose of suing and obtaining settlements from alleged infringers. This business model has been used with success in Europe and is now showing up in United States courts. These suits are akin to recording industry litigation on steroids: hundreds, even thousands, of defendants are sued together in a single action. Nearly 100,000 defendants were sued in such actions in 2010. With settlements averaging $2,500, suits on this scale can be quite lucrative. These suits, however, should raise alarm. While sophisticated plaintiffs use mass litigation to avoid the expense of filing multiple suits in different courts, individual justice and fairness are threatened when legally unsophisticated individuals are brought into the court system on such a large scale. Most defendants have no knowledge of concepts such as personal jurisdiction and joinder and lack the means to hire a lawyer to defend themselves in often far-flung courts. Most will simply pay the settlement demanded by the plaintiff, with no knowledge of their rights.