Attorneys Wary of ISP’s “Good Corporate Citizen” Claim Before Supreme Court

William Milliken, director in Sterne Kessler’s Trial & Appellate and Electronic Practice Groups, spoke with Westlaw Today on the recent online copyright infringement case at the U.S. Supreme Court, Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment, Inc.

Milliken noted the justices showed concern on removing “large swaths of people off the internet based on allegations that even one person associated with a given IP address had infringed.”

“Given that, it is possible that the court may try to avoid those two extremes and craft a narrow, middle-ground sort of rule that might, for example, treat complaints about single-family homes different from complaints about IP addresses associated with large entities like universities,” Milliken stated.

He continued, “But it is difficult to predict what such a holding would look like because neither the parties nor the government fully fleshed out the contours of a middle-ground rule in their briefing or at argument.”