The judge issued a preliminary ruling today, focusing not on whether the court has jurisdiction over Gina, but instead questioning the merits of the case. Interestingly, he said that I would probably win the case if Gina had sued me for copyright violation, since the image probably meets the fair use exception and Gina may have also given me an implied license to use it. But, he questioned whether I am entitled to sue Gina for DMCA abuse and tortious interference with Bluehost over one DMCA notice.
It is unclear why the judge made no mention of the DMCA notices sent to my second host or the fact that Gina was soliciting others to file DMCA notices with the express purposes of pushing my site off the web. We will be reminding the judge of this in our response and expect that it will then be clear that I am entitled to sue Gina for what she did.
You can read the ruling here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27713670/Tuteur%20judges%20order%204-10-13.pdf
