Recently Google sought a ruling against record label to squash infringement claims
by Matthew Rogers.
To paraphrase, a small record company called Blues Destiny Records sued Google,
Microsoft and Rapidshare. The lawsuit revolved around Google and Microsoft
providing links to infringing material on Rapidshare in their respective search
results.
In response, Microsoft quickly pulled its offending search results from Bing, but
Google decided not to comply as there was not order to do so. Rapidshare did not
change anything either.
The lawsuit filed by Blues Destiny and Matthew Rogers was ill-prepared and it was
unable to stand on its own in court, so Blues Destiny withdrew their suit for now but
declared that they would sue Google when they get their affairs in order.
Google decided not to wait and has filed a “complaint for declaratory relief” to
force the court to rule on the case that Blues Destiny abandoned.
From a strategic standpoint, this was a brilliant move on Google’s part.
However they are not alone in the strategic use of the “complaint for declaratory
relief” suit; the motion picture industry has utilized this language against
Realnetworks, Inc.
To paraphrase, back in September 2008, the motion picture industry sued
RealNetworks over its RealDVD software, which allowed consumers to copy their
DVDs to their computers for playback.
RealNetworks had actually obtained a license from DVD-CCA for its software, and
felt confident by relying on earlier court rulings in the DVD-CCA v. Kaleidescape
case.
In that ruling, California ruled that Kaleidescape’s licensed digital DVD jukebox was
within the scope of the DVD-CCA license, and on the outset, this would seem to
apply here.
Then on September 30, 2008, the formal launch of RealDVD, the motion picture
studios filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles and asked for a temporary restraining order
(TRO) to block the launch.
Simulataneously, RealNetworks filed suit in San Francisco asking the court to
declare that distribution of RealDVD is in compliance with the law.
The LA court transfered the case to San Francisco, where a Judge ordered a
temporary halt to distribution of RealDVD.
This is illustrative of the power of the “complaint for declaratory relief” and what it
does is essentially force the hand of the weaker party in a case.
In the Google case, this was a great strategy and protected Google against, this legal
challenge.
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