SAN FRANCISCO — The attorney representing Falcon and Raging Stallion's parent company, DataTech Enterprises, has asked a federal judge to levy sanctions against counsel representing now-defunct file-locker site Oron.com.
Industry attorney Gill Sperlein says that Oron attorneys are engaging in a strategy of depleting funds available for "satisfying the inevitable judgment against it" by spending those funds on attorneys fees.
"Oron has decided that if they can't keep their illicitly earned profits, they are going to make sure that plaintiffs don't get any," Sperlein told XBIZ.
Sperlein in a motion to the court last week said that Oron's attorneys unnecessarily burdened the court and DataTech with an unmeritorious motion for reconsideration of a ruling that "simply rehashed" arguments made in its response to a preliminary injunction.
"Defendant’s attorneys at best recklessly filed the motion, and likely filed the motion for an improper purpose, i.e. to dissipate funds on attorney fees in order to prevent plaintiff from recovering on its eventual judgment," Sperlein told the court in the motion for sanctions.
Oron last week asked a federal judge to amend a preliminary injunction against the defunct site on a limited basis to allow Oron to pay for its defense in the case, as well as an appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Its attorneys requested to withdraw $300,000 from Oron's PayPal account to pay for legal fees and other costs.
Oron attorneys contend that the preliminary injunction that DataTech won in August wasn't based on all of the facts in the copyright infringement suit and that a preliminary injunction shouldn't have taken place.
DataTech sued the file-locker site for unspecified damages in August after it found at least 400 titles on the site that were involved in more than 40,000 separate acts of infringement.
After stating its case, DataTech was able to convince U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer to freeze Oron' s U.S. assets in its PayPal, CCBill, AlertPay accounts, as well as other U.S. financial institution accounts.
The DataTech suit comes on the heels of Corbin Fisher's legal battle over similar infringement charges against Oron.
After a $550,000 settlement was recently reached between Corbin Fisher and Oron, the file locker's attorneys appealed unsuccessfully to the 9th Circuit. But Oron attorneys have made more appeals over numerous aspects of the case and the 9th Circuit scheduled motions and hearings all the way through January.
Another gay adult studio, Flava Works, also has filed copyright infringement claims against Oron.
Sperlein told the court that it should impose $4,000 in sanctions against Oron attorneys for time responding to the unmeritous motion, as well as for the preparation of the motion for sanctions.
Industry attorney Val Gurvitz, who represents Oron, did not immediately respond to XBIZ for comment late Monday.
A hearing over the motion for sanctions will be heard Dec. 14 at U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
