Quentin Tarantino filed a lawsuit in U.S. district court alleging copyright infringement against Gawker Media on Monday, Jan. 27, reports NBC News.

The suit arises from actions that occurred one week earlier when Tarantino’s script for his latest western film, “The Hateful Eight,” was leaked online.

The director has since cancelled plans for the film.

The web site Defamer, which operates under Gawker Media, posted a link to the script that was hosted under an anonymous URL.

In the suit, Tarantino alleges that Gawker distributed “unauthorized downloadable copies of the leaked unreleased complete screenplay” and “expressly refused to remove their directions to and URL links to get the infringing materials.”

“Gawker Media has made a business of predatory journalism, violating people’s rights to make a buck,” the complaint continues. “This time, they went too far. Rather than merely publishing a news story reporting that Plaintiff’s screenplay may have been circulating in Hollywood without his permission, Gawker Media crossed the journalistic line by promoting itself to the public as the first source to read the entire screenplay illegally.”

The director and screenwriter reportedly learned of the leaked script through his agent. In a Jan. 21 interview with Deadline.com he stated that he “finished a script, a first draft, and I didn’t mean to shoot it until next winter, a year from now. I gave it to six people, and apparently it’s gotten out today.” He told the website that he was very “depressed” by the betrayal.

According to Tarantino’s complaint, the following day, Jan. 22, the Gawker web site “actively solicited” the leaked script for no “newsworthy or journalistic” purpose.

Instead, the complaint reads, “Their headline boasts… ‘Here,’ not someplace else, but ‘Here’ on the Gawker web site. The article then contains multiple direct links for downloading the entire screenplay through a conveniently anonymous URL by simply clicking button-links on the Gawker page, and brazenly encourages Gawker visitors to read the screenplay illegally with the invitation to ‘Enjoy!’ it.”

Gawker posted a response to the court filings Monday afternoon, “Someone unknown to Gawker put it on a web site called AnonFiles, and someone unknown to Gawker put it on a different web site called Scribd. Last Thursday, Gawker received a tip from a reader informing us that the script was on the AnonFiles site, after which Gawker published a story reporting that the script had surfaced online.”

“News of the fact that it existed on the Internet advanced a story that Tarantino himself had launched,” the post continued. “And our publication of the link was a routine and unremarkable component of our job: making people aware of news and information about which they are curious.”

Tarantino is suing Gawker Media for the company’s profits that resulted from the post, as well as actual and statutory damages of at least $1 million.