MIAMI - A federal district judge in Miami has awarded New York-based Pitbull Productions $2.85 million and a website after finding the site's owners willfully violated copyright and trademark laws applicable to the studio's content.
In his default judgment, U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan ordered defendants The Urban Netmedia Group Inc., Jonathan Lewers, Nadine Lewers and Larry Lewers to pay $500,000 for each of two trademark infringements and $50,000 for each of 37 copyright violations, as well as the plaintiff's attorney fees. In addition, he ordered the domain name WhatsTea.com turned over to the plaintiffs and permanently enjoined the defendants from violating the plaintiffs' intellectual property rights in the future. Jordan also ordered the defendants "to monitor and ensure plaintiff's DVDs, DVD covers, screenshots, content [or any other portion of the plaintiff's copyrighted material] are not being displayed on the website WhatsTea.com or any other website controlled or website owned by defendants."
WhatsTea.com, until the judgment a file-sharing website, "enabled and encouraged" users to upload content they did not own in order to exchange it with others, according to the lawsuit. Uploaders received download credits based on the amount of content they contributed. In some cases, the file sharers uploaded entire movies to the website, Pitbull alleged in its complaint.
The judgment indicated "online newsgroups, file-sharing sites, blogs and magazine sites, among others, cannot hide while they willfully allow others to illegally infringe on our hard work, copyrights and trademarks," Jalin Fuentes of Pitbull said in a prepared statement. "Webmasters, registrants and domain owners must take active measures to ensure that a company's intellectual property is not being abused, illegally posted, shared and prostituted on the Internet."
At least in this case, he also noted, "it was not enough for the site just to take down unauthorized material once notified. They must, once served notice, implement active measures, software, technology, monitoring, etc. to help ensure that chronic, continued infringement does not occur. Otherwise, as the court has ordered, there are draconian monetary penalties - not to mention your site will be taken away."
According to Fuentes, Pitbull finally gained control of the website two months after the judge signed the order.
"What we are going to do with this site is provide WhatsTea.com guests the opportunity to legally view gay adult content without breaking the law," Fuentes told GAYVN.com.
As for other personal and professional assets belonging to the defendants, Fuentes said Pitbull, with the help of the court, continues to try to determine against what the company may collect. The studio has received an asset accounting from the defendants, but "it takes months, if not years, to collect on these types of judgments," he told GAYVN.com.
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