Article

2012-01-01 -Lurid Crime Tales-

Righthaven sued by process server, faces contempt motion

As 2011 concluded, problems with unpaid bills continued to pile up for copyright lawsuit filer Righthaven LLC of Las Vegas.
We may never get our money back, but we can cheer as the bastards go down.
Records Saturday showed Righthaven has been sued by its own process server and also faces a request by defense attorneys that it be found in contempt of court.

Righthaven is the copyright enforcement partner of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and formerly of the Denver Post.

Righthaven is half owned by the family of billionaire Arkansas investment banker Warren Stephens, who owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal through his Stephens Media LLC company. Stephens made headlines this week when his majority-owned Halifax Media Holdings LLC agreed to buy 16 newspapers around the country from the New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
Co. for about $143 million.

While Stephens continues to invest in the newspaper industry, his family's half-owned Righthaven copyright protection company has been floundering.

After filing 275 no-warning lawsuits since March 2010 alleging online copyright infringements of material from the Review-Journal and the Post, which provided copyrights to Righthaven for lawsuit purposes, Righthaven has suffered a series of defeats in court.

Judges found Righthaven lacked standing to sue as the newspapers maintained control of the material at issue, or the defendants were protected by fair use, or both. These losses have prompted judges to order Righthaven to pay $216,355 in prevailing defendants' legal fees.

Righthaven can't -- or won't -- pay the fees. It's appealing the legal setbacks as well as the fee awards.

Righthaven's failure to pay the fees of prevailing defendant Wayne Hoehn led to Hoehn gaining a court order requiring Righthaven to turn its copyrights, trademark and website domain name over to a receiver so they could be auctioned.

Righthaven didn't turn these assets over to the receiver, but the receiver seized the righthaven.com domain name anyway and is auctioning it.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Johnston in Las Vegas, in the meantime, on Dec. 12 ordered Righthaven CEO Steven Gibson and his wife Raisha "Drizzle" Gibson to appear in court on Jan. 5 for a judgment debtor examination. Johnston also ordered that by Thursday -- a week before the examination -- Righthaven turn over to Hoehn's attorneys information about Righthaven assets that may be used to satisfy Hoehn's judgment and documentation about Righthaven's "purchases, transfers of funds or other dissipation of assets" in recent months.

Posted by Fred 2012-01-01 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11142 views ] Top

#1 Big deal, the owner will ditch Righthaven the company and just start a new one. Corporate personhood FTW!

Posted by gromky 2012-01-01 01:14|| 2012-01-01 01:14|| Front Page Top

#2 The limited liability corporations enjoy may have limits of its own.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2012-01-01 01:45|| 2012-01-01 01:45|| Front Page Top

#3 I believe it is not immunity from outright fraud, but even if it was the bar for proving it is set pretty high.

Posted by gorb 2012-01-01 03:22|| 2012-01-01 03:22|| Front Page Top

#4 This is not going to be proper revenge until Warren Stephens gets pulled into it big time, and starts looking at tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in punishment.

Posted by Anonymoose 2012-01-01 09:47|| 2012-01-01 09:47|| Front Page Top

#5 Big deal, the owner will ditch Righthaven the company and just start a new one

Perhaps not, or at least not one based on the Righthaven model. The intellectual property legal industry, and thus the legal industry in general, has been angered with RH's undercutting and will be a tad more aggressive in stomping the interloper.

Corporate personhood FTW!

We can't all be Communist China (tho some here would like that).

Posted by Pappy 2012-01-01 13:17|| 2012-01-01 13:17|| Front Page Top

#6 About now, a generous donation to an Obama PAC might by RH principles would be in order.

Posted by manversgwtw 2012-01-01 14:50|| 2012-01-01 14:50|| Front Page Top

#7 I won't be satisfied til RH is done and Stephens gets hit hard, the attorneys all lose their licenses to practice, and end up eating from c@sino dumpsters.

Too much? F*ck em

Posted by Frank G 2012-01-01 15:25|| 2012-01-01 15:25|| Front Page Top

#8 Minimum bid on their domain name is now $1,950. That won't pay off many of their bills! Ha ha.

Posted by Scooter McGruder 2012-01-01 21:01|| 2012-01-01 21:01|| Front Page Top

#9 They grabbed $7,000 plus fees from one dirt poor blogger, who had a real good defense of good faith. Unfortunately, the LOCAL courts pay no attention to good defenses, and judgments can be registered in any other State court. If I was a lawyer I would jump into this Pro Bono.

Posted by Black Bart Speaking for Boskone9699 2012-01-01 22:54|| 2012-01-01 22:54|| Front Page Top

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