RIAA "boilerplate" complaint comes under fire in yet another P2P case

Last month, a California judge denied the RIAA's motion for a default judgment against a file-sharing defendant on the grounds that the "boilerplate" complaint didn't provide enough details of the alleged copyright infringement. Rae Schwartz, a resident of New York City who suffers from multiple sclerosis, is now asking a judge to dismiss the lawsuit filed against her on the same grounds, according to her attorney, Ray Beckerman.

In letters sent today to the presiding judge and magistrate judges in Elektra v. Schwartz, Beckerman informs them that Schwartz will make a motion to dismiss the copyright infringement complaint filed by the RIAA in July 2006. Beckerman cites the decision in Interscope v. Rodriguez, pointing out that the language in the RIAA's complaint against Schwartz is "virtually identical" to the one deemed insufficient in Interscope v. Rodriguez.

Indeed, the language in just about every complaint filed by the RIAA up until the Interscope decision is virtually identical. "Plaintiffs are informed and believe that Defendant, without the permission or consent of Plaintiffs, has used, and continues to use, an online media distribution system to download the Copyrighted Recordings, to distribute the Copyrighted Recordings to the public, and/or to make the Copyrighted Recordings available for distribution to others," read the complaints in both Interscope and Elektra.

Drawing on the Supreme Court's decision in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly earlier this year, Judge Rudi M. Brewster ruled that the RIAA's complaint included no facts supporting its allegations. "The compliant is simple a boilerplate listing of the elements of copyright infringement without any facts pertaining specifically to the instant Defendant," wrote the judge, who found that it "fails to sufficiently state a claim upon which relief can be granted."

Judge Brewster allowed Interscope, et al., to file an amended complaint after denying their motion for a default judgment—and the possibility definitely exists that other courts will give the record labels similar leeway. The plaintiffs quickly took advantage of the out given to them by the judge and subsequently filed an amended complaint which was heavier on dates and IP addresses, but otherwise offered little more in the way of details with regard to the alleged infringement.

Subsequent complaints filed by the record labels have abandoned the language cited by Judge Brewster, but there are a large number of cases currently pending that use the same boilerplate language. You can bet that Schwartz's motion for dismissal on these grounds won't be the only one.