Solicitors at Ralli, a national UK law firm, have successfully managed to get porn lawyers Golden Eye International to drop their London Patents County Court case against a woman accused of using her broadband ISP connection to share copyright material (piracy) online (adult video 'Fancy an Indian?').

Golden Eye, which claims to hold numerous film copyrights and is linked with the Ben Dover porn brand in the UK, began its action late last year (original news) after one of the accused failed to respond when a letter arrived demanding a payment of £700 (i.e. "speculative invoicing") to settle the dispute.

It's understood that Golden Eye originally sought for the case to be tried in a County Court but attempted a pullout after it became clear that they would instead need to appear before the London Patents County Court and possibly Judge Birss QC. Birss is best known for putting the smack down on ACS:Law / MediaCAT's "amateurish and slipshod" attempts to sue 27 individuals for similar activity (here).


Law firms typically track related piracy by monitoring the Internet Protocol ( IP ) addresses of online users, which are assigned to your computer each time you go online and made public by BitTorrent (P2P) networks. However IP's can easily be faked, hijacked or even shared (e.g. public Wi-Fi, office/home networks etc.) in ways that, as the SRA's Timothy Dutton QC described last summer, turns it into evidence of the "flimsiest" variety (here).

Ralli acted for the Defendant in this matter on a no win - no fee basis.