Posted: 13th Apr, 2011 By: MarkJ


Solicitors firm
Ralli has confirmed that the
London Patents County Court will rule next Monday (18th April at 10.30am) on whether or not to hand down any "
wasted costs" to the controversial law firm ACS:Law (
Andrew Crossley), which follows its failed case against 27 individuals (
here); broadband ISP customers whom it had accused of taking part in "
illegal"
internet copyright infringement via BitTorrent P2P services.
Ralli indicated last month that they would continue to pursue the firm, and potentially even Crossley himself, for legal costs, which caused the final hearing to drag on for several hours as both sides attempted to argue their respective positions.
Michael Forrester, Ralli's Intellectual Property and IT team, recently clarified:
"Wasted costs orders allow the defendants to recover their costs from the other side’s legal representatives. In this case it deals with whether Media CAT or ACS:Law should pay the Defendants’ costs."
This is an apparently unusual order, which is usually only made in cases where a Court determines that a legal representative has acted unreasonably, negligently and improperly. Ralli is understood to be
seeking costs of £90,000 for five of the accused that it represents.
By contrast Crossley has argued that ACS:Law actually
operated at a loss by spending £750,000 on pursuing net pirates and making just £300,000 from people paying the settlement fines. Last year's ACS:Law email leak revealed that approximately 11,000 warning letters had been sent by 28th April 2010 and of those some 30% chose to settle.