Opinion
No. CV 11-01055-PHX-FJM
07-23-2012
Xcentric Ventures, LLC, Plaintiff, v. Karsen, Ltd., et al., Defendants.
ORDER
The court has before it plaintiff's motion to compel (doc. 39), defendant Eugene Selihov's response (doc. 42), and plaintiff's reply (doc. 43). Underlying this discovery dispute is a battle between consumer complaint websites. Plaintiff owns www.ripoffreport.com while defendant Selihov owns www.scaminformer.com. Plaintiff asserts copyright and trademark claims against defendant, alleging that he has copied protected materials from plaintiff's website onto his own website.
Pursuant to Rule 26(b)(1), Fed. R. Civ. P., a party "may obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party's claim or defense." Relevance "has been construed broadly to encompass any matter that bears on, or that reasonably could lead to other matter that could bear on, any issue that is or may be in the case." Oppenheimer Fund, Inc. v. Sanders, 437 U.S. 340, 351, 98 S. Ct. 2380, 2389 (1978).
Plaintiff's first request for production originally sought "a full and complete copy of the entire contents of the website www.scaminformer.com including all source code, posts, author information, server logs, etc." Plaintiff later narrowed its request to records reflecting any contact information defendant has for the authors of specific pages on www.scaminformer.com and information relating to the posting date of specific pages. In defendant's response, he objects to plaintiff's original request for production but does not object to or even mention plaintiff's later, narrower request. Defendant has shown no reason why the information requested would be irrelevant or impose an undue burden on him. The information sought is highly relevant to plaintiff's claim that defendant copied material from its website.
Plaintiff narrowed its fourth request for production and defendant agrees to respond to the revised request. Plaintiff's motion to compel a response to its fourth request for production is therefore moot.
The parties are reminded that the court's Rule 16 scheduling order limits motions to compel, responses, and replies to two pages each.
IT IS ORDERED GRANTING in part and DENYING in part plaintiff's motion to compel. (Doc. 39). Defendant is ordered to comply with plaintiff's narrowed first request for production. Defendant has agreed to comply with plaintiff's fourth request for production and therefore the motion to compel on this issue is denied as moot.
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Frederick J. Martone
United States District Judge