NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Louis Vuitton Malletier, S.A. (“Louis Vuitton”) part of LVMH, the world’s leading luxury group, today announced that it has won the lawsuit it filed in 2007 against the California based Internet hosting business of Akanoc Solutions, Inc., Managed Solutions Group, Inc., and Steven Chen (the “Akanoc Defendants”) in the United States District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose). On August 28th, the jury found the Akanoc Defendants liable for contributory trademark and copyright infringement, and awarded statutory damages in the amount of $32,400,000.00. The court is expected shortly to issue a permanent injunction banning the Akanoc Defendants from hosting websites that sell counterfeit or infringing Louis Vuitton goods.
Any and all nefarious activity alleged in this lawsuit was conducted by a customer, of a customer, of a customer yet the hosting provider was found liable, not the actual criminal manufacturing and selling the fakes.
We had all better watch our backs since it seems that claims of not being able to inspected tens of millions of packets per second is no longer a viable excuse.
Any and all nefarious activity alleged in this lawsuit was conducted by a customer, of a customer, of a customer yet the hosting provider was found liable, not the actual criminal manufacturing and selling the fakes.
We had all better watch our backs since it seems that claims of not being able to inspected tens of millions of packets per second is no longer a viable excuse.
Hmmm. I thought DMCA made it quite clear that a service provider cannot ignore reports.
"The Akanoc Defendants’ specific business model of providing unmanaged server capacity to web hosting resellers does not exempt them from taking active steps to effectively prevent infringing activity upon notification from an intellectual property rights owner. "
I consider that the more important statement in the article. The "upon notification" being the largest issue. Don't know if DMCA covers anything outside the scope of copyright, but I think it's been generally accepted that ignoring reports of infringement can bring about liability.
> Any and all nefarious activity alleged in this lawsuit was conducted by a c
ustomer, of a customer, of a customer yet the hosting provider was found liab
le, not the actual criminal manufacturing and selling the fakes.
>
> We had all better watch our backs since it seems that claims of not being a
ble to inspected tens of millions of packets per second is no longer a viable
excuse.
>
Hmmm. I thought DMCA made it quite clear that a service provider cannot
ignore reports.
"The Akanoc Defendants’ specific business model of providing unmanaged
server capacity to web hosting resellers does not exempt them from
taking active steps to effectively prevent infringing activity upon
notification from an intellectual property rights owner. "
I consider that the more important statement in the article. The "upon
notification" being the largest issue. Don't know if DMCA covers
anything outside the scope of copyright, but I think it's been generally
accepted that ignoring reports of infringement can bring about liability.
Jack
It will be interesting to see the court cases against ISP's that
don't shutdown other illegal activities once they have been notified.
abuse@ better not be a blackhole or you are putting yourself at risk
based on this.
How does this stuff ever make it to court??? Why is it an ISP is responsible for policing it's customers? I'm constantly getting called up from scammers trying to offering me bogus warranty insurance for cars I don't own...does that mean I can sue Verizon because they are letting scammers use their network?
It doesn't mention anything in the article,. but I'm wondering if the ISP received a court order to shut down the customer and ignored it, then I can see why the ISP lost the case.
As was pointed out very early on, you as an xSP do not enjoy common carrier status from the FCC like an ILEC would receive, now whether that is right or wrong is another matter of debate....
How does this stuff ever make it to court??? Why is it an ISP is responsible for policing it's customers? I'm constantly getting called up from scammers trying to offering me bogus warranty insurance for cars I don't own...does that mean I can sue Verizon because they are letting scammers use their network?
It doesn't mention anything in the article,. but I'm wondering if the ISP received a court order to shut down the customer and ignored it, then I can see why the ISP lost the case.
There's a world of difference between proactive policing and acting reactively on receipt of notice that your customers are doing specific badness... or not.
Reading between the lines, it sounds like Akanoc had a customer who
put a server in their facility. This customer then hosted a bunch of
sites including the ones that infringed. On receiving a complaint,
Akanoc contacted the customer and more or less said, kill this website
or we unplug your server. Then the customer shuffled the site around
to another of his servers.
Have a look at pages 10 through 12. Page 12 lines 11-13, it reads to
me like the judge made a serious error trying to understand the
difference between a web site and an IP address.