Righthaven Archives
With buyers not exactly beating down the door for Righthaven LLC’s trademark and certain copyrights, an auction for those items was extended Wednesday.
Lara Pearson, a Northern Nevada attorney appointed by a federal judge to seize and sell Righthaven’s property to satisfy creditors owed $188,927, said the auction on eBay would be extended past the initial Wednesday afternoon expiration time.
Pearson said the auction would continue through Friday, but declined comment on whether she would lower the $100 opening bids for the 18 copyrights, which cover two adult movies, some non-newspaper sports betting material and a Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial.
Pearson hasn’t commented on whether or when 260 more Righthaven federal copyright registrations will be auctioned.
Righthaven is the copyright enforcement partner for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and formerly of the Denver Post. Beginning in March 2010, it filed 275 lawsuits alleging infringement of material from those newspapers.
Because of court rulings finding Righthaven lacked standing to sue, it’s unclear whether the federal copyright registrations Pearson is auctioning are valid or whether they will be used as memorabilia. The copyrights were registered after the newspapers assigned material to Righthaven for lawsuit purposes.
Defendants who beat back Righthaven suits against them are owed the $188,927 for their legal fees, a sum Righthaven can’t or won’t pay, despite its backing by the billionaire Warren Stephens family that owns the Review-Journal.
As of Wednesday afternoon, no one had bid on the copyrights and just two bids had been placed for the trademark. The high bid for the trademark stood at $510 on Wednesday afternoon.