Auction of Copyright Troll Righthaven's Website Underway 63
Tootech sends this quote from Vegas Inc:
"The online auction of the righthaven.com website domain name got underway Monday, with bidders having until Jan. 6 to submit offers. A judge has authorized a receiver to auction the intellectual property of Las Vegas-based Righthaven LLC, the newspaper copyright infringement lawsuit filer. The auction is aimed at raising money to cover part of Righthaven's $63,720 debt to a man who defeated Righthaven in court. The man, Wayne Hoehn, and his attorneys defeated Righthaven when a judge threw out Righthaven's lawsuit against him over Hoehn's unauthorized post on a sports betting website message board of a Las Vegas Review-Journal column by columnist and former publisher Sherman Frederick. Hoehn was a defendant in one of Righthaven's 275 lawsuits filed since March 2010."
The less that is bid... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'm sure this is a silly question... (Score:5, Interesting)
... but why would you want to buy righthaven.com? Really, what possible value could it have?
Righthaven owe a lot of money due to losing the court case and being ordered to pay costs, but they don't have many assets to sell to cover those costs. By purchasing the domain name you would, in a sense, be donating to the person who fought Righthaven in court and won - doing us all a favour in the process.
Peace,
Andy.
Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is like any other auction. They have something you may want, and by auctioning it you see if you can get it for the price people are willing to pay. Quite often in cases of bankruptcy or debt recovery the item being auctioned off can be tremendously undervalued.
Recently we went to the auction of a glass manufacturer. Most people were there looking for glassing equipment to boost their own businesses. Things like forming and cutting machines were being bided up quite high. But then they came to old stock. Seems like there weren't too many people interested in it so we picked up 50 sheets of hardened pool fencing glass for $50. They normally cost $160 per sheet. Bargain, we now have a new fence.
This isn't about the company. It's about you, your ideas, and what you could do with the assets of the company. If you have a use for the name "RightHaven" then now is THE time to buy the domain. Chances are if you wanted it and approached the company for it they may have said flat out no, or asked for some extortionate price. Now that they must sell you could potentially get it for a bargain since the name no longer has any value to the company.
Re:shell of a shell (Score:5, Interesting)
You know what, you're right. This ended "way too fast". Look at SCO - someone(s) funded that zombie forever. Here they're doing the opposite strategy. "Ha Ha, if we win, be strike gold, if we lose, oops, we had no assets."
I'd like this to be bought by someone with a BIG pocket and use it to go after when the media companies themselves decide wholesale infringement is just dandy.
Really, they crumbled for just 60K+ ? Really? Tell me which species of fish that is smelling here. Red Herring?
Re:shell of a shell (Score:0, Interesting)
You know what, you're right. This ended "way too fast". Look at SCO - someone(s) funded that zombie forever. Here they're doing the opposite strategy. "Ha Ha, if we win, be strike gold, if we lose, oops, we had no assets."
They do have assets. They have an ownership stake in all those patents they tried to enforce. Remember when the judge threw out their cases saying they couldn't be given only the authority to sue, but had to actually own them?
Now they should be fair game as well.
So even if this guy doesn't see a dime, in a worst case scenario would should see a bunch of bullshit patents either fall by the wayside or, if the guy is cool about it, given to the public domain.
Re:I'm sure this is a silly question... (Score:5, Interesting)