A recent Daily Business Review story by Raychel Lean, “Pay Attorney Fees or Face Trial: Court Brushes Off Dentist’s Request to Dismiss Suit,” reports that a plaintiff dentist who elected to toss his own copyright infringement lawsuit weeks before trial, after the defense produced damaging evidence, faces a choice from Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker in the Northern District of Florida.  The judge agreed to dismiss the case without prejudice on one condition: the plaintiff would have to pay the defendant’s attorney fees and costs for two and a half years of litigation.  “The plaintiff, therefore, has two options,” the ruling said. “He can either decline to dismiss, decline to pay and take his chances at trial; or he can accept the dismissal with the condition set forth in this order.”

The ruling didn’t offer much to smile about for Boca Raton cosmetic dentist Mitchel Pohl, who sued an internet media company in April 2018 after discovering that before-and-after shots of one of his patients, referred to as “Belinda,” appeared on multiple websites without his permission.  Walker’s ruling is the latest twist in a case that was dismissed in June 2018 and revived in May.  While Walker had ruled the photos of Belinda’s teeth weren’t creative or original enough to merit copyright protection, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit found that that was a question for jurors to answer.

A trial was scheduled for October, but in the weeks before, defense attorneys Matthew Nelles and Adriana Kostencki of Nelles Kostencki in Fort Lauderdale acquired some crucial information from the U.S. Copyright Office: a string of emails that were game-changing for his client, MH SUB I LLC, known as Internet Brands.  The plaintiff’s attorney, William Hollimon of Hollimon P.A. in Tallahassee, did not respond to requests for comment by deadline.

According to the ruling, the dentist had previously claimed that he’d mistakenly entered the wrong year on a copyright registration form for his website in 2005.  He alleged that he wrote 2000 instead because he’d innocently misinterpreted of the application form, an explanation Walker had accepted.