Grokster Case Decided: Supreme Court Unanimously Reaffirms Sony and Announces Standard for Active Inducement of Copyright Infringement

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Abstract

In a unanimous opinion written by Justice Souter, the Court reaffirmed the rule of law it announced in 1984 in Sony v. Universal1 ("Sony‐Betamax"), but held that the Sony‐Betamax rule does not immunize the distributor of a technology from liability for secondary copyright infringement where the distributor of thetechnology intentionally induces direct infringement by others. The Supreme Court vacated the Ninth Circuit's decision and remanded the case to the trial court, finding there was "substantialevidence" from which the trial court could find defendants Grokster and StreamCast, both distributors of peer‐to‐peer file sharing software, liable for inducing copyright infringement byend‐users of their software.

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