14 DAY TRIAL // The matter of whether new website Gawker broke any copyright laws when it reported the leak of Quentin Tarantino's latest script has been answered by a federal judge in California. The legendary director was so furious about the leak that he chose to sue the famous website, blaming it for spreading the leak.
The movie in question was “The Hateful Eight,” a western story that has since been scrapped, but that doesn't mean that Tarantino was going to lay down and turn the other cheek. Since Gawker was one of the first news outlets to report the leak and also provided some links to some other sources that actually hosted the script, he decided to take them to court.
Unfortunately, according to the legal documents obtained by Contactmusic, Judge John F. Walter chose not to side with Tarantino. In his opinion, “[N]owhere in these paragraphs or anywhere else in the Complaint does Plaintiff allege a single act of direct infringement committed by any member of the general public that would support Plaintiff's claim for contributory infringement. Instead, Plaintiff merely speculates that some direct infringement must have taken place.”
The documents go on to reveal that “Plaintiff's Complaint fails to allege the identity of a single third-party infringer, the date, the time, or the details of a single instance of third-party infringement, or, more importantly, how Defendant allegedly caused, induced, or materially contributed to the infringement by those third parties.”
The judge did allow Tarantino's legal team a leave to file an amendment for his contributory infringement claim that has to be filed by May 1. If new evidence can be brought to light that the website did, in fact, aid to the leaking of the material, there is a slight chance that the lawsuit will continue.
The story goes back to January of this year, when the script of the soon-to-be produced movie “The Hateful Eight” mysteriously leaked after Tarantino gave out 6 copies to actors and agents for casting purposes.
As the story broke, Gawker published a report about the leak and provided links to other websites that hosted the said material. Tarantino subsequently flew into a fit of rage and accused them of having “crossed the journalistic line by promoting itself to the public as the first source to read the entire screenplay illegally.”
In his lawsuit, he sought statutory damages, as well as a compensation of at least one million dollars. At this point, his chances of getting any money from the website are close to zero.
Meanwhile, Tarantino's hot temper seems to have cooled off a bit. After initially saying that he would never pick up the leaked project again, he's now made public his intention to stage a life reading of the script in Los Angeles using Hollywood A-listers such as Samuel L. Jackson and Kurt Russel.
With “The Hateful Eight” dead in the water, it is believed that Tarantino is going to turn his attention to his next project “Kill Bill Vol. 3.”