Righthaven Continues the Copyright Infringement Actions

Our friends at Righthaven, the now famous copyright “troll” which scours North America on behalf of its partner, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, has filed six more copyright infringement suits.  Sued were Imperial Hotel Management College (Vancouver, BC), plus Flagstone Patio, Starrtrack Electronics, Browseblog, RateMyCop.com, and Gaminglaptops. As you can see, size of organization has no relevance to Righthaven.  As has been their pattern, it is believed they continue to ask for $150,000 in damages and forfeiture of the defendants’ Web site domain names.

The suits, and there are now almost 160 of them, are all filed in the U.S. District Court in Las Vegas. Just this week, apparently for the first time, a defendant sued by Righthaven won a dismissal motion on the merits. In that case, Righthaven had sued a real estate agent for unlawful copying of a significant portion of a story. Key point: the judge felt the real estate agent’s use of the story was unlikely to affect the market value of the story.