Quentin Tarantino has dismissed the lawsuit against Gawker Media claiming the publication leaked the script of his film project, " Hateful Eight."
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the director claimed Gawker contributed to copyright infringement by linking to his script. However, U.S. District Judge John F. Walter claimed Tarantino did not provide enough evidence to prove there is a basis for the case.
"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," the judge told the court.
Despite the judge's ruling, Tarantino had the opportunity to amend his lawsuit and bring the case to court again. However, Tarantino decided to voluntarily dismiss the case, which the judge allowed to be without prejudice.
"This dismissal is made without prejudice, whereby Plaintiff may later advance an action and refile a complaint after further investigations to ascertain and plead the identities of additional infringers resulting from Gawker Media's contributory copyright infringement, by its promotion, aiding and abetting and materially contributing to the dissemination to third-parties of unauthorized copies of Plaintiff's copyrighted work," the dismissal motion stated, according to THR.
Gawker has remained adamant about their site, Defamer, not being responsible for the leak of Tarantino's "Hateful Eight" script.
"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 back in January.
"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."
