Righthaven Archives
Righthaven LLC of Las Vegas suffered yet another setback Friday when a federal judge dismissed seven more of its newspaper copyright infringement lawsuits.
Judge Gloria Navarro, in Las Vegas, dismissed the suits after Righthaven failed to respond to her March 8 order to show cause why she should not dismiss the suits.
The March 8 order was based on a ruling by another federal judge in Las Vegas, Philip Pro, in which he stripped Righthaven of any ownership interests it may have had in the copyrights it sued over.
Pro transferred those rights to a Righthaven creditor so they could be auctioned.
Without owning the federal copyright registrations it had sued over, Righthaven no longer had standing to prosecute the lawsuits it filed, defense attorneys said.
The suits dismissed Friday were against the Virginia Citizens Defense League, Thomas Chandler, Hawaii Tourism Association Inc., Ryan Burrage, Inkosonic Networks, Isaac Rosete and Ecological Internet Inc.
These dismissals mean just 29 Righthaven lawsuits remain open — all in Las Vegas and Reno — out of the 275 the company had filed since March 2010.
With Righthaven’s main outside attorney in Nevada appearing to no longer represent the company, and Righthaven showing no indication it can afford to hire another attorney, the company’s copyright-lawsuit filing days appear to be over.
That means federal judges have been in cleanup mode, in recent months dismissing Righthaven lawsuits in batches in Nevada and Colorado and dismissing the company’s lone suit in South Carolina.
Given this trend, it’s probably only a matter of time before the remaining 29 suits in Las Vegas are dismissed.
Issues that remain to be resolved are whether Righthaven will try to prosecute appeals of its legal setbacks in the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and whether defendants that defeated Righthaven in court can recover their legal fees from the company. Those fees so far amount to $186,680 — a number likely to grow in the coming months as additional defendants request their fees.
Friday's lawsuit dismissals came as Righthaven and one of its litigation foes, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, waited for another federal judge to decide whether Righthaven and its CEO would be held in contempt of court and fined after Righthaven failed to turn over documents to one of its creditor defendants who defeated it in court.
As the copyright enforcement partner of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and formerly of the Denver Post, Righthaven tried to profit by obtaining copyrights from those newspapers for copyright infringement lawsuit purposes.
But Righthaven was hit with a series of legal setbacks related to its lack of standing to sue and defendants being protected by the fair use doctrine of copyright law.