The Hollywood Reporter has the story of the US Copyright Group's latest "unexpected move"—dismissing the first two P2P lawsuits it filed earlier this year. Shocking stuff, unless you've actually been reading the court docket.

US Copyright Group, which is controlled by Virginia law firm Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver, has sued more than 14,000 Americans this year for allegedly downloading various independent films on BitTorrent networks. In January, it brought the first two of these cases, targeting 749 anonymous "Does" for sharing the film The Gray Man and 83 Does for sharing Uncross the Stars (later upgraded to 195 Does).

US Copyright Group used the suits to subpoena ISPs, trying to get real names and addresses instead of the IP addresses it had collected. The lawyers then sent out settlement letters to these defendants, asking them to pay up or risk a named federal lawsuit.

So why did the group dismiss both of these cases this week? Well, this was always the plan. Once the names were gathered, the Doe suit would be dismissed and named lawsuits could be filed against anyone who didn't settle. And those subpoenas have now been answered, as per the court's requirements.

As lawyer Thomas Dunlap told the DC District Court back on July 12, 2010, "Plaintiff has now received production responsive to the subpoenas Plaintiff issued on the ISPs. Plaintiff is continuing its due diligence in ascertaining the identities of the Doe Defendants and the merits of Plaintiff’s case against each Doe Defendant. Therefore, Plaintiff will name and serve any Doe Defendant it plans on pursuing in this case and will dismiss, without prejudice, those Doe Defendants Plaintiff will not pursue by the court’s deadline of August 10, 2010."

As good as his word, Dunlap moved to dismiss both Doe cases on August 9, though no named cases appear to have been filed yet. Settlement letters have previously threatened to seek the full $150,000 in potential statutory damages for those defendants who refused to settle, though two federal judges have recently capped such awards at a couple thousand dollars each.