Robert Ambrogi Blog
A week ago, I reported here that that a federal judge in Georgia had dismissed without prejudice Fastcase’s declaratory judgment lawsuit against Casemaker over the latter’s claims of copyright in Georgia state regulations. Yesterday, Fastcase refiled the suit.
The court had dismissed Fastcase’s lawsuit for lack of jurisdiction on two grounds. One was that, because Casemaker had never registered a copyright in the materials at issue, it would not be entitled to file an infringement action against Fastcase. The second reason was for lack of diversity jurisdiction. The judge concluded that Fastcase had failed to meet the amount-in-controversy threshold for diversity jurisdiction of $75,000 because it had failed to allege damages with sufficient specificity.
In the complaint filed yesterday, Fastcase has now pled its damages with specificity.
“The State Bar of Georgia requires us to include the Georgia Regulations as part of its state bar member benefit,” Fastcase CEO Ed Walters told me. “If we don’t, we risk being in breach of that contract, which is for more than $75,000 per year.”
In addition, he said that Casemaker’s terms of use on the Georgia regulations site say that every visit to the site for commercial purposes, every download of the regulations, and every commercial sale is in violation and that, “If you violate this agreement, or if you access or use this website in violation of this agreement, you agree that Lawriter will suffer damages of at least $20,000.”
“Since we ordinarily update these sites multiple times per week, and sell access to the Georgia regs multiple times per day, Casemaker’s own valuation of its damages puts the amount in dispute more than $75,000,” Walters said.
Read the full complaint here: complaint filed 2/2/17.