Quentin Tarantino's Gawker Lawsuit Over Leaked Script Dismissed

A federal judge dismissed director Quentin Tarantino’s lawsuit against Gawker.com for linking to a leaked screenplay he wrote.

The legal battle may not be over, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The California judge which granted Gawker’s motion to dismiss the copyright infringement suit opens the door for Tarantino to refile the case up until May 1 if his legal team makes changes to the suit.

The famed director filed the lawsuit after Gawker linked to another web site which featured the leaked script for a new Tarantino film. Gawker said its visitors could go and “enjoy” the script, which Tarantino’s team says hurt its market value. Gawker countered that it was simply reporting on the news about Tarantino’s reaction to the script leak.

… in a ruling on Tuesday, the court declined to address the “fair use” issue but granted the motion because Tarantino “failed to adequately plead facts establishing direct infringement by a third party or facts that would demonstrate [Gawker] either caused, induced, or materially contributed to the alleged direct infringement of those third party infringers,” according to the ruling….

More from the ruling by U.S. District Judge John F. Walter: “Nowhere in these paragraphs or anywhere else in the complaint does Plaintiff allege a single act of direct infringement committed by any member of the general public that would support Plaintiff’s claim for contributory infringement. Instead, Plaintiff merely speculates that some direct infringement must have taken place. For example, Plaintiff’s complaint fails to allege the identity of a single third-party infringer, the date, the time, or the details of a single instance of third-party infringement, or, more importantly, how Defendant allegedly caused, induced, or materially contributed to the infringement by those third parties.

Tarantino recently held a public reading of the script, dubbed Hateful Eight, with actors who were allegedly attached to star in the film production.