AnimeNewsNetwork has found that Toei Animation has filed a lawsuit against 869 people who torrented the 515th episode of One Piece back in September of 2011. The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on September 28, 2011.

According to the complaint, the 869 Defendants who have US IP addresses torrented One Piece episode 515 "I Will Get Much, Much Stronger! Zoro’s Pledge to his Captain!" between September 16th and 23rd 2011 on the torrent with hash 5683D0EFD0C703237918E2A626D8DAD89D02046D. The torrent with this hash corresponds to a rip of the FUNimation simulcast stream.

The claim is asking for a permanent injunction against infringing the copyrights of any Toei work ever for each defendant, that the defendants must delete or destroy all copies of the files, actual damages or statutory damages, Plaintiff's costs and legal fees, and other damages the court deems appropriate.

Toei also filed a Motion for Leave to Take Expedited Discovery on October 5th, 2011 to find out the details of who was behind each defendant's IP address, but the court has not yet granted or denied the motion.

This lawsuit was filed in the District of Columbia and not Texas or California because according to the complaint "at least a portion of the Defendants reside or may be found in this district and a substantial portion of the events giving rise to this claim occurred in this District."

The breakdown of the defendants IPs by state is approximately as follows:

PA: 24

TX: 85

CA: 185

FL: 75

MA: 31

MI: 20

TN: 6

NY: 78

MD: 29 NJ: 25

WA: 30

VA: 23

MN: 8

OH: 20

LA: 9

IN: 12

GA: 18

AL: 7 OK: 8

OR: 18

AZ: 10

NV: 10

RI: 2

UT: 11

CT: 13

NH: 2

IL: 27 AR: 3

NC: 15

WI: 5

MO: 9

HI: 13

CO: 11

SC: 4

ME: 1

DE: 2 VT: 2

KY: 1

IA: 3

WV: 2

MS: 1

NM: 2

DC: 3

NE: 3

AK: 1

KS: 2

Toei is being represented by Evan Stone, the same lawyer who represented FUNimation when they sued 1337 downloaders of One Piece back in January of 2011. That lawsuit was eventually dismissed by FUNimation after the court ruled they would have to sue them individually. The court stated the Does in that case had been improperly joined since "there are no allegations...that the Defendants are related to each other, or that they acted in concert or as a group in their allegedly offending actions." The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure require that "claims against the joined defendants 'arise out of the same transaction, occurrence, or series of transactions or occurrences,'" which had not been alleged.

This lawsuit is different in that it actually focuses on why the defendants can be joined in a single lawsuit. It claims that the "defendants worked in concert ... by means of a sophisticated file transfer technology called BitTorrent. This technology is unique in that it is designed to be used by a group of people working together ... which is known as a BitTorrent "swarm." It goes on to state that since members of the swam pass pieces back and forth, "these joint acts by the Defendants of sending and receiving pieces of the file to each other constitute the 'same series of transactions or occurrences.'" Since they committing copyright infringement in doing so, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure allow joining them.

The lawsuit is Toei Animation Co., Ltd. (Japan) v. Group of Participants in Filesharing Swam Identified by Hash 5683D0EFD0C703237918E2A626D8DAD89D02046D

via AnimeNewsNetwork

Image ©Eiichiro Oda / Shueisha, Toei Animation