A World Intellectual Property Review report revealed that WWE Studios Finance has sued a group of BitTorrent users for copyright infringement on its 2016 action movie release of “Elminators.”
The WWE filed its suit at the US District Court for the District of Connecticut on Thursday, and alleged unidentified defendents infringed and vicariously infringed its copyright.
According to the lawsuit, the defendents used BitTorrent to “unlawfully acquire, reproduce and distribute” the WWE movie which featured Wade “Bad News” Barrett in a supporting role.
The BitTorrent protocol is “one of the most common” peer-to-peer file sharing protocols used for large amounts of data, the suit said, but WWE has not sued the company behind BitTorrent.
The protocol allows users to distribute large files without “creating a heavy load on the source computer and network”.
WWE used forensic software to identify the IP addresses associated with the infringement, the claim added.
WWE asked for actual damages, statutory damages of $150,000 per infringement, costs and jury trial.