A California court has granted a default judgment against a user who used a botnet to artificially inflate popularity via a botnet.
We’ve got another exclusive story here on Freezenet. A court in California has granted Twitch’s motion for default judgment. The case was brought against Jared Kelly. Kelly apparently went by multiple aliases including Erik Bouchouev, Justin Johnston, Michael and Katherine Anjomi, Pooria Sharaffodin, Marco Pelagatti, and Alex Renfrow.
According to court documents obtained by Freezenet, Twitch alleged that Kelly ran a botnet. Kelly sold those services and funnelled money through a Fastspring account via the ID “Twitchviewerbot”. Those services would then be used to artificially inflate the popularity of certain Twitch channels. As a result of the service that Kelly provided, Twitch argued that this case involved trademark infringement, unfair competition, cybersquatting, and breach of contract.
After all of this, the court ruled in favour of Twitch and ordered the following (among other things):
As to remedies, Twitch’s Motion for Default Judgment is GRANTED, and Twitch is awarded $100,077.51 in actual profits and $45,000 in statutory damages against Bouchouev. In addition, Twitch is awarded $10,000 in statutory damages against Renfrow/Kelly. Finally, Twitch is awarded costs and reasonable attorney’s fees, subject to proof, against both Renfrow/Kelly and Bouchouev.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED THAT a separate injunction order shall issue on the following terms:
1. Jared Kelly AKA Alex Renfrow and Eric Bouchouev shall not directly or indirectly provide any product or service related to software programs that interact with any services offered by Twitch including but not limited to the website available at www.twitch.tv, and its network of websites, software applications, and related products or services (collectively, “Twitch Services”).
2. Jared Kelly AKA Alex Renfrow and Eric Bouchouev shall not use or access the Twitch Services.
3. Jared Kelly AKA Alex Renfrow and Eric Bouchouev shall not use any simulation, reproduction, counterfeit, copy, or colorable imitation of Twitch’s registered or unregistered trademarks including the TWITCH trademark (U.S. Registration No. 4,275,948 and U.S. App. Serial No. 86,485,231), the TWITCHTV trademark (U.S. Registration Nos. 4,087,877 and 4,230,874), and the Glitch Logo (U.S. App. Serial No. 86,485,295).
4. Jared Kelly AKA Alex Renfrow and Eric Bouchouev shall not use any false description which can or is likely to lead the trade or public or individuals erroneously to believe that any software, service, program, item, or thing has been promoted, displayed, licensed, sponsored, approved, or authorized by or for Twitch.
5. Jared Kelly AKA Alex Renfrow and Eric Bouchouev shall not create, write, develop or assist in the creation, writing or development of any robot, crawler, spider, software, program, device or the like that interacts in any way with the Twitch Services.
For legal experts, the ID of the case documents are: Case No. 16-cv-03404-BLF. United States District Court, N.D. California, San Jose Division.
Statistic cheaters are definitely a problem amongst different platforms. This often one of the reasons why spam is a problem amongst different platforms. As Twitch argues in this case, they do hurt the community in the long run. Certainly an interesting development we uncovered.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
