Prosecutors on Tuesday indicted ultramarathon runner Kevin Lin (???) for his alleged involvement in a copyright-trolling operation that has filed 937 lawsuits since August last year, and sought a heavy sentence.
Lin was found to have set up a copyright consultancy company and attempted to use litigation as a source of profit since being a graduate student in the College of Law at National Chengchi University, Taipei prosecutors said in the indictment.
Lin was admitted to the college in 2018 and graduated in 2020.
The company started to uploaded 18 movies, the copyrights for which it acquired from Vie Vision Pictures Co. and Applause Entertainment Ltd. in May last year with the specific intent of tempting people to download the materials, according to the indictment.
Once the company uncovered the identities of users it claims were linked to the illegal downloading of the copyrighted movies, it had its lawyers sue them, seeking to leverage out of court settlements from the defendants, the prosecutors alleged.
Since August last year, the company tracked hundreds of IP addresses associated with downloading each film and filed 937 lawsuits for copyright infringement, extorting settlement profits of NT$900,000 (US$29,207) in 25 cases, prosecutors said.
The prosecutors requested that Lin and a lawyer surnamed Cheng (?), who played a major role in devising the litigation strategy, receive a heavy sentence, saying the large number of lawsuits brought by the company had overwhelmed the Intellectual Property Police Corps and other police agencies and prosecutors’ offices.
Cheng was also charged with abusing legal procedures for illegitimate purposes in violation of the Attorney Regulation Act.
Meanwhile, another lawyer, surnamed Lin (?), a man surnamed Hsu (?), who was the head of the company on paper, and a man surnamed Chen (?) employed by the company, were also indicted for their role in the case, according to the indictment.
Lin had not made any public comment about the indictment as of Tuesday afternoon. However, he did deny any wrongdoing when he was initially brought in for questioning by prosecutors in June.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel