Cox Communications is seeking more than $100,000 in legal fees from Round Hill Music, claiming the music label improperly tried to glom onto larger label BMG’s successful copyright complaint against the MSO.
Cox is still trying to appeal a $25 million verdict against it in favor of BMG, with courts ruling the cable company didn’t do enough to stop some of its customers from pirating music.
Round Hill originally joined BMG in filing the complaint against Cox under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. However, Round Hill dropped its portion of the case when Cox proved that it didn’t actually have the rights to some of the songs it claims were infringed upon in its suit.
“Round Hill’s case against Cox was unreasonable from start to finish: It brought claims of copyright infringement without owning any copyrights, and it continued to pursue those claims aggressively even after Cox exposed the obvious defect on this threshold issue,” reads Cox’s suit against Round Hill, which was obtained and published by TorrentFreak.
“Round Hill’s repeated obfuscation of the facts, and the continued and aggressive pursuit of those claims after their falsehood was apparent, warrant an award to Cox of the fees Cox incurred defending against those claims,” Cox added. “Cox invested considerable time and effort in discovery pinning down Round Hill’s elusive and false ownership claims”.
In August, a Virginia federal court threw out Cox Communications’ appeal of the verdict awarding BMG $25 million for digital piracy damages.
Late last year, U.S. District Court Judge Liam O'Grady ruled that the ISP didn't qualify for safe harbor protections under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because it didn't do enough to stop its customers from pirating songs.
The judge ruled in favor of BMG, which has rights to top artists including David Bowie, Bruno Mars and Frank Ocean. BMG filed the suit after its agent Rightscorp detected more than 1.8 million instances of infringement in connection with 1,397 copyrighted works.
In declining Cox’s appeal, Judge O’Grady said that the jury had more than enough evidence to conclude that the MSO didn’t do enough to warrant Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) protections. He said Cox ignored BMG’s repeated requests to stop the piracy.
For more:
- read this lawsuit (PDF)
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Cox loses appeal on piracy case, has to pay $25M to music label BMG