Andrew Crossley, the UK lawyer behind P2P settlement letter firm ACS: Law, has actually filed lawsuits against several named individuals. Well, sort of. And it didn't go so well.

Crossley has said for years that he wasn't in the shakedown business and that real lawsuits would be filed against alleged file-sharers who didn't settle—but few such suits have been forthcoming. Crossley has been attacked by members of the House of Lords, has lost a crucial archive of his business e-mails, and is facing disciplinary charges from the regulators. But somehow he presses on, and last month he pressed his claims against eight individuals who had never responded to the court.

Crossley wanted default judgments in each case, but the England and Wales Patents County Court (which handles many IP cases) refused to give him any money, and in fact had little good to say about Crossley's lawyering. For instance, the court notes that in three of the eight cases, the defendant has actually responded. "The requests for judgment should never have been filed," wrote Judge Birss, QC.

In three more cases, the court has no evidence that the defendants were even notified of the case agains them. True, it was the court's job to send such notification, but Judge Birss sees no evidence that the court has done so, and Crossley did not apparently check first before filing the default judgment claim.

Finally, two defendants were notified and failed to file any response, so they are in default. But Crossley's filing is so full of holes that the judge refused to award him cash even in these cases. For one thing, the judge isn't convinced that the rightsholder, Media CAT, even has the right to sue. Media CAT "represents" various pornographers, but claims can only be brought by the rightsholder or by an exclusive licensee.

In addition, Crossley wanted more than money; he also wanted an injunction, but that can't be obtained using the quick administrative procedure he tried. Instead, he'll need to go through a more elaborate procedure with more notification requirements and safeguards.

Finally, Crossley says that the person he has named in each lawsuit should be responsible for file-sharing, even if a child or a friend or a someone from the neighboring apartment used their Internet connection to do the deed. The judge calls this "simply wrong" and says that the law speaks only about "authorising" copyright infringement. If such infringement was committed over someone's Internet connection without authorization, it's not clear that the Internet subscriber is responsible.

The entire judgement reads like this—a long litany of the defects in Crossley's case. To really drive home the point, the judge concludes with an odd statement: "I should end by recording that I am not sorry to have reached the conclusion I have in refusing all the requests for default judgment. The nature of the allegations made in the Particulars of Claim are such that it seems to me that it would be unfortunate if it were possible to obtain a default judgment without notice" to the defendant.

"Peer to peer file sharing which involves copyright infringement is an important and serious matter and claimants with a proper claim are entitled to use the full machinery of the courts to enforce their rights," concludes the judge. But that machinery has to be used in the right way.

UK group Consumer Focus sums up the situation so far: "Copyright owners appear to not have won a single case in the UK where the internet subscriber has contested the evidence in a full hearing."