Righthaven says it might have to file for bankruptcy. Despite its backing by the billionaire Warren Stephens family, Las Vegas copyright lawsuit filer Righthaven LLC warned today it may have to file for bankruptcy because of a series of setbacks in its litigation campaign.
The warning came in an emergency request by Righthaven to a federal judge in Las Vegas that he stay his order that Righthaven pay $34,045 in legal fees to attorneys who successfully defended Kentucky message board poster Wayne Hoehn against a Righthaven lawsuit. Righthaven has already appealed U.S. District Judge Philip Pro’s fee award to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Righthaven's Brand of Copyright Trolling. Copyright trolls are nothing new, and Righthaven is just the latest group of lawyers to try to turn copyright litigation into a business model.
What these lawyers have in common is that they seek to take advantage of copyright's draconian damages in order to bully Internet users into forking over money. To anyone who has watched the file-sharing lawsuits of the last few years or the current BitTorrent cases brought by a DC law firm, the Righthaven saga is developing into a familiar, unfortunate story. It also has some especially troubling twists. Righthaven copyright trolls never had the right to sue, have their asses handed to them by the EFF. Why Righthaven’s Copyright Assignment Is A Sham. For several weeks EFF and co-counsel Fenwick & West have been trying to persuade a federal district court to unseal a critical document Stephens Media produced in Righthaven v.
Democratic Underground. One Troll Down… Many More To Go. Righthaven is a copyright holding company that has been menacing website owners in Nevada, Colorado, and South Carolina for the past year, filing lawsuits against them on grounds of copyright infringement of newspaper material.
The company started suing in 2010 after signing a confidential agreement with Stephens Media, LLC (publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal), and it has subsequently filed 265 cases of copyright violation on behalf of Stephens Media and, Media News Group, and Stevo Deisgn Inc. Righthaven also has an agreement with WEHCO Media, but has not brought any suits on their behalf. The troll got some bad press after suing the Las Vegas Review-Journal‘s own sources, a reporter writing about a Righthaven lawsuit, charities (including a non-profit supporting immigrants rights), and poor bloggers (including a 20-year old on disability). The Las Vegas Review-Journal has responded to the public criticism without remorse. This image taken from here. Righthaven: saving the newspaper industry, one lawsuit at a time. The Trauma Intervention Program (TIP) of Southern Nevada is a nonprofit that sends trained volunteers to the site of severe accidents, suicides, fires, and violent theft.
The volunteers comfort family members, witnesses, and bystanders—traumatized people who can't be helped by anything found in an ambulance. TIP might seem an unlikely target for a federal copyright lawsuit, but it found itself hauled into court last week for posting 14 local newspaper articles about TIP and its volunteers to the group's website. In most of the articles, TIP volunteers are the main sources for the reporters, providing plenty of quotes and (sometimes jarring) anecdotes about their work.
RightHaven.com Taken Down for Invalid Whois. Judge to copyright troll: your "business model" isn't my problem. Ars Technica freelancer Eriq Gardner was recently sued over a photo that appeared in a piece he wrote for us last year.
The flimsy lawsuit was quickly dismissed, but the company behind it lives on—and has sued 50+ people in Colorado for their use of the same photo. Now, the federal judge overseeing all these cases has made it clear that he sees through the company's "lawsuit as revenue generation" strategy, and that he's not interested in enabling it.
Righthaven is already backing down. The company at issue here is a Las Vegas litigation firm that finds allegedly infringing newspaper posts and images online, contracts with the newspaper in question for control of the the copyright, and files federal lawsuits against its targets. Nevada Judge Threatens Sanctions for Copyright Troll. A Las Vegas federal judge threatened to sanction copyright troll Righthaven, calling its litigation efforts Tuesday “disingenuous, if not outright deceitful.”
The blistering decision also places into doubt the litigation factory’s year-old business model, which is also under a Colorado federal judge’s microscope. U.S. Bloggers Mulling Legal Action Against Righthaven. Clayton Cramer Bloggers who paid thousands of dollars each to settle copyright-infringement allegations with Righthaven were mulling their legal options Wednesday, a day after a federal judge said the copyright troll had no legal standing to bring that kind of lawsuits.
“We’re thinking seriously about what to do,” Clayton Cramer, the former operator of the now-defunct Armedcitizen.net, said in a telephone interview. More than 100 owners of blogs and other sites have settled with Righthaven for undisclosed sums, and Cramer wants his money back. Righthaven Says It Owns News Articles It’s Suing Over — for Real This Time. Copyright troll Righthaven told a federal judge Thursday that it has revised its contract with the Las Vegas Review-Journal to give it full copyright ownership over some of the newspapers’ content.
It’s a bid to squelch a legal controversy over whether it has the right to sue bloggers who’ve quoted from the articles without permission. Three decisions in the past week found that Righthaven, which has lodged more than 200 suits, never had standing to sue over content produced by Stephens Media publications, including the Review-Journal. In one ruling, U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt dismissed Righthaven’s well-publicized case against the Democratic Underground blog, finding that Righthaven attempted to “manufacture” standing to sue. In that case, Democratic Underground was targeted for posting four paragraphs from a 34-paragraph story published by the paper. Whether Hunt will reopen the matter is unclear. The Copyright Act allows for damages of up to $150,000 per infringement.
See Also: Rule 11, barratry, champerty, and "inline links" When's the last time --in an intellectual property case or any case-- you've heard of counterclaims of champerty (an improper arrangement where a party with no interest in a lawsuit agrees to finance and bear the expense of litigation in exchange for a portion of the proceeds) or barratry (creating legal business by stirring up disputes and quarrels, generally for the benefit of the lawyer who sees fees in the matter)?
Perhaps it's long overdue. These are the counterclaims now being levied against the specious litigation mill, Righthaven, LLC. Righthaven, which is co-owned by Vegas attorney Steven Gibson and Stephens Medial, LLC, has an interesting [alleged] lawsuit business model: First, it scours the Internet for copyrighted content owned by its newspaper clients, including Fair Use multi-line excerpts of articles (not entire works). Next, the newspaper-client licenses the work to Righthaven. Righthaven has already lost one or two suits under Fair Use.
Technologically, Righthaven v.