CHICAGO — A federal judge has withdrawn Flava Works' motion for default judgment against defunct file-locker site Oron.com after it tapped a Chicago law firm to represent it over copyright infringement charges.
Since the suit was filed in July, Oron has not responded to Flava Works' claims for unspecified damages.
Now, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman has given newly appointed Oron counsel 28 days to respond to Flava Works' claims that it allowed distributing of its interracial gay content on the site.
Attorneys Charles Mudd Jr. and Mark Petrolis of the Chicago-based Mudd Law Offices informed the court last week that they will represent Oron in the file-locker site's third matter over copyright infringement charges.
Oron and its operators settled similar infringement allegations with Corbin Fisher and currently is locked in another infringement battle with Raging Stallion/Falcon's corporate patent DataTech.
The Mudd Law Offices is no stranger to the adult entertainment biz.
The firm has waged a number of porn BitTorrent cases against more than 1,000 John Doe defendants on behalf of adult distributors First Time Videos, Hard Drive Productions, MCGIP and Open Mind Solutions.
The firm also has acted as counsel in defense of a party involved in the MyVidster case. In that case, the social video bookmarking site that was sued by Flava Works for embedding copyright-infringing versions of Flava Works content.
Mudd and Petrolis didn't respond to XBIZ by post time relative to Oron's first steps in defending itself in the case.
But Philip Bleicher told XBIZ that despite Gettleman's decision to continue the case because Oron now has counsel, he's adamant on seeing the case through.
"Our attorney, Meanith Huon, is excellent at this type of litigation and we intend to carry this lawsuit through to completion," Bleicher said.
In the suit, Flava Works has asked the court for Oron to be found liable for direct copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement and inducement of copyright infringement.
It asks for statutory, compensatory and punitive damages, as well as a permanent injunction and temporary restraining order against the defendants.