For those of you who have been following along, you know that I have filed a couple of Copyright Claims Board cases for my clients. That number is now 4. Of those, one settled shortly after filing and one was just filed in late December and hasn’t even been approved for service yet. That leaves two.
One of those had the respondents opt out just before it was too late for them to do so. Bummer and, frankly, dumb of them I think. My client can still file in federal district court and, if that happens, that is going to be much more expensive for the former-respondents-now-likely-defendants. This was a small use infringement and the CCB would have seemed perfect for the matter–well, settling before any of that would have been perfect, but outside of settlement a low-cost litigation alternative made sense for all the parties. Oh well, they had the right to opt out. Anyway, there is still a possibility that the matter could settle; but, if the other side doesn’t make a serious effort very soon, I think there will be a new case filed with the appropriate district court.
That leaves the last of my four cases. It’s actually the first case I filed with the CCB and it has now moved past the opt-out stage, meaning that my client has paid the second part of the filing fee (remember, the filing fee is paid in part at the time of filing then, if the case proceeds past the opt-out window, the rest is then due) and everyone has agreed to litigate in the CCB. We just recently received our scheduling order, laying out how the case will proceed. The next step is that the respondents must file their response to the claim, and that isn’t due for about 2 months. After that, we’ll have a pre-discovery conference (online) and then discovery opens.
People ask me what I think about the CCB and my first response now is always “It is slooooow.” The case that is moving forward was filed in late July. It is now January and the equivalent of an answer hasn’t been filed and isn’t due until early March. Discovery should close at the end of June, then written testimony will be due about 60 days after that. Then, if needed, there will be a hearing. In short, there will not be a decision in this case (assuming it doesn’t settle meanwhile) until well more than a year after filing.
Now, that isn’t long for traditional litigation, but I think everyone was expecting this process to be much faster. To be fair, it may speed up some as they work out the bugs but, for now, you must manage your speed expectations.
I’m hoping that in the end we’ll decide that the system worked within the “fast, good, cheap” paradigm: that is, we know it’s slow and cheap so, hopefully, it will be good.