The Taipei District Court on Tuesday sentenced ultramarathon runner Kevin Lin (林義傑) to 10 months in jail for his involvement in a copyright trolling operation that filed 937 lawsuits between 2021 and 2022.
Lin was found guilty of instigating or contracting for a lawsuit for gain under the Criminal Code as well as dealing with litigation cases for profit without an attorney license, which contravenes the Attorney Regulation Act (律師法).
Lin’s sentence can be converted to a fine of NT$1,000 for each day.
Photo: Liang Wei-ming, Taipei Times
In the same case, six others were given jail sentences ranging from six to eight months.
The case can be appealed.
Lin was discovered to have set up a copyright consultancy company to use litigation as a source of profit, Taipei prosecutors said when they indicted him in September 2022.
Starting from May 2021, the company uploaded 18 movies that it had acquired the copyrights for to tempt people into downloading the material, the indictment said.
The company traced the people who downloaded the movies and sued them for court settlements, prosecutors said.
A total of 937 lawsuits for copyright infringement have been filed, with 25 settled, extracting a total profit of NT$900,000 for the company, prosecutors said.
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