Gawker
Media has settled a copyright infringement lawsuit by Eric Dane and his wife Rebecca Gayheart stemming from Gawker's posting of a sex tape made by the couple, according to court papers filed this
week.
Full details of the settlement -- which was arrived at through mediation -- are not known, but the clip no longer appears to be available on Gawker's properties. Lawyers for Gawker and
the actors have not yet responded to Online Media Daily's requests for comment.
Dane and Gayheart sued Gawker Media for copyright infringement last September, shortly after the company posted
edited versions of the 12-minute tape on its blogs. Gawker posted around four minutes of the video on the Defamer blog on Aug. 17 with the headline "Dane's Anatomy: McSteamy, His Wife and a Fallen
Beauty Queen's Naked Threesome." Gawker also posted an "uncensored" version on Fleshbot the following day.
The Defamer version had been viewed around 4 million times as of last month.
Late
last year, Gawker won a preliminary skirmish in the case when U.S. District Court Judge George Wu in Los
Angeles ruled that Dane and Gayheart would not be entitled to statutory damages -- which could have been as high as $150,000 -- because they hadn't registered the video with the U.S. Copyright Office
before the clip appeared on Defamer.
That decision meant that even if Gawker infringed on the couple's copyright, the actors would be limited to recovering non-statutory damages. That figure
could include whatever profits Gawker earned as a result of the video.