PHOENIX — A federal judge last week dismissed a $9.6 million porn copyright infringement lawsuit last week targeting the operators of Porn.com and TrafficForce.
The plaintiff in the suit, AMA Multimedia LLC — the operator of more than 20 porn membership sites, including Passion-HD.com, Tiny4K.com and PornPros.com — however, already has filed an appeal with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals challenging an order tossing the case over jurisdictional issues.
Kris R of Porn.com today said that the company was pleased with the dismissal of the suit, calling AMA Multimedia’s claims “frivolous.”
“This lawsuit was a shakedown attempt,” Kris R told XBIZ. “We will continue to defend our rights in response to such frivolous lawsuits through whatever level of litigation is necessary. And in each case, we shall ask the court to award us the legal fees incurred by us defending the frivolous lawsuit."
Kris R further said that Porn.com “is and has always been operated in accordance with all applicable laws.”
“Porn.com management leads the industry in closely working with sudios and content producers and respecting the intellectual property rights of others,” he said.
Operators of Porn.com and TrafficForce were sued after AMA Multimedia alleged that 64 of its copyrighted works were found on more than 110 separate Porn.com-affiliated URLs
AMA Multimedia’s complaint alleged that Porn.com scraped content from other websites, including XVideos and VPorn, and then sold that content on its website while making it look like it was user uploaded.
Porn.com’s traffic service provider, TrafficForce, was named in the suit because it allegedly didn’t take precautions to ensure that its advertisers weren’t uploading copyrighted material for their banners located on the Traffic Force platform.
The court granted dismissal because of jurisdiction issues set in place because AMA Multimedia previously joined Porn.com’s content partnership revenue sharing program.
In the Porn.com agreement, language spelled out that all legal actions arising out of their agreement was to be instituted in a Barbados court.
AMA Multimedia, however, asserted that discovery would be difficult in Barbados, there would be no local evidence and Barbados would have limited evidentiary or subpoena power.
But U.S. District Judge David Campbell ruled last week that AMA hadn’t made a required “strong showing” that enforcement of the forum selection clause would be unreasonable.
An official for AMA Multimedia on Monday, citing the pending appeal in Campbell’s order, declined comment to XBIZ.