Righthaven Ordered To Forfeit Its Intellectual Property 62
New submitter BenJCarter writes with an update on Righthaven, the company that tried to make a business model out of copyright trolling. According to Wired,
"[Righthaven] was dealt a death blow on Tuesday by a federal judge who ordered the Las Vegas company to forfeit 'all of' its intellectual property and other 'intangible property' to settle its debts. ... U.S. District Judge Philip M. Pro of Nevada ordered Righthaven to surrender for auction the 278 copyrighted news articles that were the subject of its lawsuits. ... Righthaven's first client, Stephens Media of Las Vegas and operator of the Review-Journal, invested $500,000 into the Righthaven operation at its outset. With Judge Pro's ruling (PDF), the media company is losing financial control of hundreds of articles and photos. 'The irony of this? Perhaps those who buy the copyrights could issue DMCA notices to the Review-Journal stopping them from redistributing them?' [opposing lawyer Marc Randazza] said via an e-mail, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act."
There we go.. (Score:5, Informative)
And nothing of value was lost..
Actual Summary (Score:5, Informative)
They lost some legal proceedings they had brought, and were ordered to pay the defendant's costs.
They failed to comply with the costs order and ended up having their assets seized to be auctioned off to pay the costs.
The fact that the property was intellectual rather than an office block in Las Vegas was less about the philosophy of the Judge and more about the fact that the IP was the only assets the business held.
This doesn't speak to the viability or legality of copyright trolling.
Re:All that valuable IP (Score:4, Informative)
"If you give your IP to scumbags, you may loose all rigths to it."
Best pun I've seen all day.