These files were distributed, published, and copied by LimeWire users without authorization from the copyright owners, potentially competing with the recording companies' own sale of the music.

A party that distributes infringement-enabling products or services may facilitate direct infringement on a massive scale, making effective enforcement for the copyright owner illusory.

[11] The court established the prerequisite of direct infringement, supported by expert testimony which estimated that 98.8% of the files requested for download through LimeWire were copyright-protected and not authorized for free distribution.

A joint amicus curiae brief was submitted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a coalition of consumers and industry[note 2] urging the court to apply the law in a manner that would not chill technological innovation.

The court found substantial evidence that LimeWire had the right and ability to limit the use of its product for infringing purposes, including by implementing filtering, denying access, and by supervising and regulating users, none of which were exercised.

[note 3] The court found all the evidentiary objections without merit and denied the motions; it did place certain conditions on plaintiffs' future interaction with a specific former LimeWire employee.

[22] The developer, who initially said his motivation was for working on the software was "to make RIAA lawyers cry into their breakfast cereal,"[21] voluntarily shuttered the LPE website rather than lose anonymity by contesting the court order.

[22] The court maintained jurisdiction in order to provide a final ruling on LimeWire's liability and damages to determine the appropriate level necessary to compensate the record companies.

Citing a hypothetical argument from Nimmer on Copyright and the U.S. Supreme Court case Feltner v. Columbia Pictures Television, Inc., the plaintiffs proposed one award for each infringement by individual LimeWire users.

[24] The defendants cited McClatchey v. The Associated Press[24] and related case law which rejected the Feltner precedent and the Nimmer hypothetical for situations involving statutory damages for infringement committed on a massive scale.

[citation needed] On 11 March 2011, the court ruled that McClatchey and related case law did indeed trump Feltner and the Nimmer hypothetical, and held that the per-infringement proposal produces "an absurd result" potentially in the "trillions" of dollars, given the large number of uploads and downloads by LimeWire users over a period of several years.

[24] The court added that the plaintiffs were "suggesting an award that is more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877.

[24]The defendants then asked for a partial summary judgment exempting 104 works which had been directly infringed by LimeWire users, and for which the plaintiffs had already recovered damages in separate actions.

[32] Citing a 2001 statement he made to investors about the risk of being sued, and a 2005 notice sent by the RIAA making him aware that the decision in MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. meant that LimeWire was liable, the plaintiffs contended that he didn't misread the law, but rather knew all along that he was violating it.

[39][40] Although the plaintiffs never explicitly asked for a specific amount of damages—rather, the exact calculation was left as an exercise for the court[25]—the press circulated several multitrillion-dollar estimates.

A few weeks later, on 8 June 2010, blogger Jon Newton, in an article on his technology news blog p2pnet, arrived at his own estimate of $1.5 trillion,[44] based on the same report of 200 million client downloads.

[48] Two days later, citing the $75 trillion figure as if it were still being actively sought, Anonymous launched a DDoS attack on the RIAA website under the Operation Payback banner.

[49] The following week, in several Australian APN News & Media outlets, an op-ed piece repeated the $75 trillion figure, erroneously calculated from $150,000 × 11,000 infringed works (which actually comes to $1.65 billion).

[51] The revived story was then reported as news by the online edition of NME, with the amount dropped slightly to $72 trillion, and with the erroneous statement that the RIAA was still actively seeking that much in damages.

The NME story linked back to an accurate, 2011 report in Computerworld,[29] but made no mention of the court's ruling that limited the damages to a maximum of $1.5 billion.

[52] The case resulted in a separate lawsuit from National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) in order for them to be included in any future settlement negotiations and damages.