The legal brief alleges that Dr. Nichols interfered in the daily running of the company, ordering decision-making timetables and requesting internal engineering It states: “Nichols effectively put himself in control of the fileID development effort, setting priorities and deciding how the fileID system should work in significant respects”.
The submission also claims that the initial ruling of the trial court made in March was subsequently reinterpreted in a way that had more serious consequences for the Napster service than the court had originally intended. In part it attributes its failure to comply with a court order, which required a guarantee that its technology for detecting infringing files was 100% effective, to the record companies for not providing complete listings of those files.