A federal judge has officially dismissed Quentin Tarantino's lawsuit filed against Gawker Media for copyright infringement.
The director claimed Gawker Media violated his creative rights when they linked to an illegal copy of his work for "Hateful Eight." The article titled "Here Is the Leaked Quentin Tarantino Hateful Eight Script" on Defamer linked to the 146-page script.
"Gawker Media has made a business of predatory journalism, violating people's rights to make a buck," Tarantino's lawsuit stated, The Hollywood Reporter reported back in January. "This time, they went too far. Rather than merely publishing a news story reporting that Plaintiff's screenplay may have been circulating in Hollywood without his permission, Gawker Media crossed the journalistic line by promoting itself to the public as the first source to read the entire Screenplay illegally."
However, Tarantino's copyright infringement lawsuit did not hold up in a federal court, according to U.S. District Court 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," Walter said in his ruling, according to Variey. "Instead, Plaintiff merely speculates that some direct infringement must have taken place."
Walter will allow Tarantino to re-file the lawsuit against Gawker on May 1. Gawker released a statement regarding Tarantino's claims against them back in January.
"Defamer covers what people in Hollywood are talking about. Thanks to Tarantino's shrewd publicity strategy, the leak of The Hateful Eight-and the content of the script-had been widely dissected online and was a topic of heated conversation among Defamer readers," Gawker said in a statement.
"News of the fact that it existed on the internet advanced a story that Tarantino himself had launched, and our publication of the link was a routine and unremarkable component of our job: making people aware of news and information about which they are curious."
