Federal Court of Canada sets Rogers "Reasonable Costs" in Norwich Orders
The Federal Court of Canada has set Rogers' "reasonable costs" of compliance with a Norwich Order in Voltage's reverse class proceeding. The decision caps a long-running dispute over the proportion of ISP costs copyright claimants must pay ISPs to comply with Norwich orders obliging ISPs to hand over subscriber information to copyright claimants alleging infringement. Following a 2018 Supreme Court of Canada decision clarifying the range of costs ISPs may ask claimants to pay for subscriber data, Rogers had asked for costs of $100 per subscriber. Voltage had asked for costs to be set at close to a third of that figure. The Court split the difference, undertaking a detailed calculation based upon the time and employee costs involved to arrive at the figure of $67.23, plus HST, for the IP address lookup of the single subscriber involved.