LONDON — A representative from Golden Eye, the intellectual property protection firm that owns the rights to numerous adult film copyrights in the U.K. including the Ben Dover Productions line of movies, plans on traveling to Los Angeles next month to offer piracy enforcement services to other adult entertainment producers.
Golden Eye's Julian Becker told XBIZ that he's coming to Los Angeles specifically for XBIZ 360° to line up potential clients to put the clamp on piracy by seeking damage awards in the U.K.
The London-based firm on Friday scored a huge victory after a U.K. appeals court granted it unfettered access to information on more than 6,155 O2 broadband customers fingered for illegally trading movies on BitTorrent networks.
"I look forward to traveling to XBIZ in LA in early January to offer Golden Eye’s services to other producers with a view to helping them protect their brands’ copyright in the U.K.," said Becker, who acts as Golden Eye's spokesman and is a Ben Dover producer.
Friday's ruling is significant for Golden Eye because now the firm can pursue alleged infringers of not only its Ben Dover brand, but they can assist other companies protecting their copyrights.
In the ruling, Lord Justice Patten said that "it was both illogical and inconsistent for the judge to deny the self-same relief to the other claimants merely because they have chosen to pursue their claims with the assistance of Golden Eye under arrangements which the judge had previously found to be both lawful and not part of a speculative invoicing scheme."
The decision, delivered by three senior Lord Justices, grants a Norwich Parmacal Order to Golden Eye requiring O2 to divulge personal details such as names and physical addresses relating to the 6,155 IP addresses.
Consumer Focus, a U.K. consumer protections group, earlier intervened with an appeal, telling the court that there were no grounds to pursue the 6,155 because Golden Eye didn't own the copyrights to movies involved in the suspected acts of piracy. At the time, a judge agreed with Consumer Focus, allowing Golden Eye to get information on only 2,845.
But Golden Eye appealed and on Friday came out victorious; now the firm will acquire details on all 9,000 IP addresses involved in the litigation.
