Luvdarts, LLC v. AT & T Mobility, LLC

We must decide whether the owners of mobile multimedia messaging networks can be held hable for copyright infringement that allegedly occurs on their networks.

I

Plaintiffs Luvdarts LLC and Davis-Reuss, Inc. (“Luvdarts”) are California corporations that produce, publish, distribute and sell mobile multimedia content. AT & T Mobility, LLC and the other co-defendants are mobile wireless carriers (“Carriers”) who own Multimedia Messaging Service networks (“MMS networks”). Mobile phones use MMS networks to send and receive messages that include multimedia content.

Luvdarts alleges that it is in the business of selling commercial multimedia-messaging content designed to be transmitted over the MMS networks to and from mobile devices. According to its complaint, Luvdarts creates “greeting card style messages” as well as “MMS advertising campaigns, MMS news, MMS coupons, [and] MMS games.” Most of Luvdarts’s business involves selling these “greeting cards” to users who can then forward them to friends.

Attached to the content Luvdarts sells is a notice that it may be shared only once. But there is no technical impediment to a recipient forwarding a purchased message *1071 to…