Date: 06-19-2009

Case Style: Capitol Records, Inc et al v. Thomas-Rasset

Case Number: 0:06-cv-01497-MJD-RLE

Judge: Michael J. Davis

Court: United States District Court for the District of Minnesota, Hennepin County

Plaintiff's Attorney: Kara Barrow, Mary Walker and Felicia Boyd, Faegre & Benson, LLP, Minneapolis, Minnesota and Andrew Mohraz, David Tonini and Tim Reynolds, Holme Roberts & Owen, LLP, Denver, Colorado for Arista Records LLC, et al.

Bob Garrett and Eleanor Lackman, Arnold & Porter LLP, Washington, D.C. and Christine Nessa, Marie L van Uitert and Matt Oppenheim, Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly LLP, Minneapolis, Minnesota for Motion Picture Association of America, Inc.

Defendant's Attorney: Kiwi Camara and Joe Sibley, Camara & Sibley, Houston, Texas;
Garrett Blanchfield and Brant Penney, Reinhardt Wendorf & Blanchfield, St. Paul, Minnesota for Jammie Thomas-Rasset

Carl Christensen, Christensen Law Office, PLLC, Minneapolis, Minnesota for The Intellectual Property Institute at William Mitchell College of Law

Prentiss E Cox, University of Minnesota Law School, Minneapolis, Minnesota for Copyright law professors

Tracey Holmes Donesky, Leonard Street and Deinard, PA, Minneapolis, Minnesota for The Progress & Freedom Foundation

Rachel Hughey, Merchant & Gould PC, Minneapolis, Minnesota and Corynne McSherry, Electronic Frontier Foundation, San Francisco, California for Electronic Frontier Foundation

Description: Capitol Records, Inc., Arista Records, LLC, Interscope Records, BMG Music Entertainment, UMG Records, Inc., and Warner Brothers Records, Inc. sued Jammie Thoms-Rasset for willfully violating the copyrights of 24 records by downloading copies of the songs from file sharing web site Kazaa.

Defendant denied Plaintiff's allegations.

Outcome: Plaintiffs' verdict for $1.92 million or $80,000 per song.

Plaintiff's Experts:

Defendant's Experts:

Comments: Editor's Note: This is the second trial of this case. It is highly unlikely that Plaintiffs will ever recover a significant portion of the judgment entered by the court on this verdict. It is also interesting to note that this is the only case out of an estimated 30,000 filed by record companies against individuals who illegally downloaded copies of copyrighted recordings. If this effort on the part of the recording industry has accomplished anything, it has at great cost terrorized potential purchasers of recorded music. Whether it has them to buy more music is questionable when one considered the gross income of the recording industry.