In a ruling that comes with no surprise, the Ninth Circuit remanded Grokster back to district court. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. (No. 03-55894, Aug. 15, 2005.)
In conformance with the mandate of the Supreme Court, we remand this case to the district court for further proceedings consistent with the opinion of the United States Supreme Court. See Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 125 S. Ct. 2764 (2005).
The four page caption is only slightly longer than the paragraph ruling.
From the backlog of links that piled up over the last month or so of Bar Exam studying and subsequent vacation, here’s an article about the business impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling. All businesses that develop new technologies, not just P2P software, may have to reevaluate development and marketing plans. Greg L. Beattie, Denise M. Howell, and Joseph I. Rosenbaum, Grokking Grokster: Staying Out of Court and in Business in the Wake of the Supreme Court’s Decision: “A common misconception about the Grokster case is that, because it involved defendants who make P2P software, it is somehow limited to that context. But the Court’s decision was not so narrow. Any product or service that enables users to engage in copyright infringement would qualify—from copy machines to computers to search engines to portable digital audio players and beyond—assuming the plaintiff is able to show, by direct or indirect evidence, that the defendant intended users to engage in copyright infringement and encouraged them to do so.”
