Righthaven Hit With Class Action Counterclaim

Hugh Pickens writes "Steve Green reports that one of the website operators accused of copyright infringement by Righthaven has retaliated, hitting the Las Vegas company with a class-action counterclaim, charging that defendants in all 57 Righthaven cases in Colorado 'are victims of extortion litigation by Righthaven, which has made such extortion litigation a part of its, if not its entire, business model.' The counterclaim says Righthaven has victimized defendants by failing to send takedown notices prior to suing, by threatening to take their website domain names when that's not provided for under the federal Copyright Act, by falsely claiming it owns the copyrights at issue and by failing to investigate jurisdictional and fair use issues before suing, among other things. The claim seeks an adjudication that Righthaven's copyright infringement lawsuits amount to unfair and deceptive trade practices under Colorado law, an injunction permanently enjoining Righthaven from continuing the alleged unfair and deceptive trade practices, an unspecified financial award to the class-action plaintiffs for damages as well as their costs and attorney's fees."

Live by the sword...

[Derekloffin]

...Die by the sword. Let's all hope it works out and Righthaven gets justly crushed.

Re:Live by the sword...

[hedwards]

Wouldn't that enable wire fraud and racketeering charges against whomever it is that set up Righthaven? Not to mention related conspiracy charges.

Represented by ...

[overshoot]

Brownstein Hyatt -- apparently a firm that does a lot of business with the gaming industry. The thought of big Italian lawyers in pinstriped suits comes to mind, but to be honest my first thought was of an obscure single practitioner in California and my second was of the enormous firm of Morrison Foerstner. [mofo.com] And yes, if you follow the link, that really is what the firm call themselves. With some justice.

Re:As much as I'd like this to succeed... can it?

[AK Marc]

The AC is right, but long winded. The short answer is the Judge should accept the case in question, look at the law, and issue a summary judgment.

Righthaven has the right to sue, however since they have no right to the copyright itself, there is no manner in which they could have had a loss. As such, the judge should dismiss the case as if it did succeed on merits, the loss is provably zero.

Righthaven hopes that the statutory minimums will let them claim that as a loss, however, the standard legal processes are in place until after the judgment of liability is made, and the case would fail before that point without regard to any statutory minimums.