Strike 3 Holdings, LLC v. Doe, 1:24-cv-00028

Strike 3 Holdings, LLC sued an unidentified defendant ("John Doe") for copyright infringement related to 28 copyrighted works allegedly distributed via BitTorrent.
The identity of John Doe was only known by an IP address provided by an Internet Service Provider (ISP), specifically Spectrum.
Plaintiff filed a motion seeking the court's permission to serve an early subpoena on the ISP before the standard Rule 26(f) discovery conference to discover the defendant’s identity.
Seeking early subpoena requests before a Rule 26(f) conference is generally only allowed by court order, requiring a demonstration of good cause.
The court applied a five-factor test to determine whether to grant pre-conference discovery: prima facie harm, specificity, lack of alternatives, centrality of information, and privacy expectations.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Pre-Rule 26(f) subpoena to identify defendant	Good cause exists to identify defendant	Not directly stated (defendant unnamed)	Court grants request; subpoena allowed
Sufficiency of prima facie showing	Claims specific actionable copyright harm	Not directly stated	Court finds complaint makes a concrete showing
Specificity and necessity of discovery	Seeks only name/address for IP address	Not directly stated	Court finds discovery request sufficiently specific
Defendant’s expectation of privacy	Minimal expectation due to copyright claim	Not directly stated	Court finds privacy expectations insufficient

Arista Records, LLC v. Does 1-19, 551 F. Supp. 2d 1 (D.D.C. 2008) (good cause for early discovery in copyright cases where defendant is identified only by IP address)
Sony Music Ent. v. Does 1-40, 326 F. Supp. 2d 556 (S.D.N.Y. 2004) (five-factor test for allowing discovery to identify anonymous defendants in online copyright cases)
Avtec Systems, Inc. v. Peiffer, 21 F.3d 568 (4th Cir. 1994) (elements of a copyright infringement claim)