The identities of an undisclosed number of Penn students who have been sued by the Recording Industry Association of America are still unknown.
The students are currently identifiable only by their Internet protocol numbers, as legal officials await a decision on an impending motion for expedited discovery.
The motion was filed late in March in the Federal District Court of Pennsylvania. If granted, it would require the University to hand over the names of Penn students whose IP numbers match the ones currently listed in the RIAA's suit.
A similar case from two months ago did not bode well for the RIAA.
Early in March, Federal Judge Clarence Newcomer in Pennsylvania denied a motion for the discovery of 203 unknown Comcast users and stated that the RIAA was required to sue each IP number individually.
It is unclear whether the prior ruling will affect this decision. "You really don't have any way to tell," said James Smith, an intellectual property lawyer at Piper Rudnick, a business law firm with a Philadelphia office.
"There could be slight differences in details between the two."
How soon the decision will be made is still unknown. The normal time frame between initiating a lawsuit in Federal Court and serving a subsequent summons and complaint is 120 days, but officials say that it is difficult to gauge when a judge will rule.
"It's really up to the court how quickly they process it," said Robert Terrell, a lawyer with Penn's Office of the General Counsel. "Judges are supposed to rule within a certain period, but they often exceed their time limit."
Still, according to Smith, it would be abnormal for a judge to exceed this time frame grossly.
"Keep your eyes peeled by June," he said. "Sometimes these things fall in a black hole. It basically depends on who the judge is."
