Despite re-filing his claim against Gawker last week, director Quentin Tarantino has done an about-face, withdrawing the lawsuit over the leaked Hateful Eight script.
The suit was being set up as a major legal battle over what exactly constitutes copyright infringement. Gawker had posted a link to a site hosting the leaked script, which Tarantino said in his original lawsuit was contributing to copyright infringement. He also sued AnonFiles.com - the site that hosted the script file - and whoever it was that posted the script to the site.
Gawker argued that Tarantino needed further proof and a judge agreed. The lawsuit was dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge John F. Walter. However, Walter did allow Tarantino to make amendments and re-file by May 1, which the writer/director did.
In the second suit, Tarantino accused Gawker of direct copyright infringement just by downloading the PDF script itself. Since the site’s post made it clear that they had read the script, Tarantino’s lawyers said that the site directly infringed Tarantino’s copyright.
But, now the legal battle is over, at least for the moment. The Hollywood Reporter confirmed Thursday that Tarantino practically promises to bring the issue up in court again in his dismissal motion. His lawyers reserved the right to refile the suit “after further investigations to ascertain and plead the identities of additional infringers resulting from Gawker Media’s contributory copyright infringement, by its promotion, aiding and abetting and materially contributing to the dissemination to third-parties of unauthorized copies of Plaintiff’s copyrighted work,” the motion reads.
image courtesy of Daniel S Levine