Posted on 11/01/2012 11:27:24 AM PDT by george76
The Righthaven LLC copyright lawsuit saga will continue indefinitely after a judge on Wednesday blocked efforts to have Righthaven's CEO fired and its appeals canceled.
Righthaven is known for filing 275 no-warning lawsuits in 2010 and 2011 in partnership with the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post. As a company, as opposed to being a law firm, Righthaven had acquired copyrights from the newspapers for lawsuit purposes. It sued individuals, companies and nonprofits it claimed infringed on the copyrights by posting content from the newspapers online without authorization.
The company essentially shut down last year after judges in three states rejected the lawsuits because the newspapers, not Righthaven, maintained control of material Righthaven was suing over. That meant Righthaven lacked standing to sue. Some defendants were also cleared based on the fair use concept in copyright law.
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Wednesday's hearing included some fireworks in which Gibson and Shawn Mangano, a former Righthaven attorney, accused each other of misrepresentations. Action in two key Righthaven cases has been stalled for most of the year because of Mangano's unexplained absence during that time, though Mangano has recently surfaced, aired complaints about Righthaven and is withdrawing from representing the company.
Mangano said that in another recently active Righthaven case that he's withdrawing from, against former federal prosecutor Thomas DiBiase, attorneys for DiBiase at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) now have possession of Righthaven computers so they can examine their hard drives in their own search for any Righthaven assets that can be located, seized and sold to cover DiBiase's fees. A judge on Oct. 16 ordered Righthaven to turn the hard drives over to the EFF attorneys.
(Excerpt) Read more at vegasinc.com ...
ping
Not sure how it applies to this morning discussion, but since we were just talking about them...
Copyright Trolls.
They file very expensive nuisance lawsuits that have nothing to do with real copyright infringement.
It couldn’t happen to a more deserving company than RightHaven!
Trolls best decribes these bottom feeder lawyers. Their goal isn’t to protect copyrighted material or IP, but to aquire patents and copyrights through “clearinghouses” for the sole purpose of mining for lawsuits. It does nothing to stop the rampant copyright and IP theft going on offshore and domestically, for the very reason that these lawyers only go after the easy marks through abuse of our legal system. After looking to patent some industrial controls devices back in the 90’s, I just ended up selling the whole thing to a manufacturer, and both sides walked away pleased with the deal.
Looks like the scummy easy-money bottom feeders are still reaping what the sowed
Do these guys actually do anything, or just file lawsuits?
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