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USCG Sues Copyright Defense Lawyer
ESRB writes "The US Copyright Group has sued Graham Syfert, an attorney who created a packet of self-representation paperwork for individuals sued for P2P sharing of certain movies and moved to have sanctions placed against the defense attorney. Syfert sells these packets for $20, and the USCG claims the 19 individuals who have used it have cost them over $5000."
That's the problem - one of the defenses did work. The "lack of personal standing." You can't sue for lost revenue if you're not the copyright holder.
No, the defense that worked is lack of personal jurisdiction, not lack of standing. Courts in a state only have power over people who reside in the state, or have a certain level of contact with the state, or who consent to jurisdiction. Basically what the successful defendants are doing is telling the court, "Hey, you are a court of state X. I live in state Y and have no contacts with state X, so you aren't the right court for this", the the court is agreeing.
Note that this doesn't end things. The plaintiff simply has to refile in the defendant's home state (or find some other state that the defendant has sufficient contacts with).
You have to be careful when raising the lack of personal jurisdiction defense, because generally responding to a lawsuit in a given court is taken as conceding personal jurisdiction of that court. However, you can make what is called a "limited appearance", where you respond solely to raise the issue of personal jurisdiction.
Further, you can't sue for lost revenue if you can't prove that, you know, you actually lost revenue.
You can sue for statutory damages.
I think they are confusing speculation with reality. The USCG lawyers are sending letters to people who are not guilty of anything (not until they are found/proven guilty). They are only asserting that they are guilty. Now they are suing someone for making it possible for the defendants to contest their speculation and requiring them to actually prove guilt in a court of law. The people they are threatening owe them nothing unless found guilty and someone enabling them to contest their speculation even less. Gaming the legal system in this way shows that their intent is to extort money using threatening letters with dollar amounts calculated to be cheaper than mounting a defense (as a zero sum game) not prove guilt. Not too much different from "you have a nice place here, I wouldn't want anything bad to happen to it".
I scanned their complaint and one point they make is arguably valid. According to the article itself, three of the motions fail. But they keep having to respond to them because they're always automatically filed by the purchaser of the forms. This presumably is a waste of the court's time.
But I bet this happens all the time with real lawyers running the show.
I'll just leave this here.
US Court Of Appeals Lifts Texas Ban On Sales Of Quicken Family Lawyer (one of the first hits in a search for "quicken family lawyer texas" sans quotes) states:
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has vacated a judgment restraining Parsons Technology Inc. from selling and distributing Quicken Family Lawyer Version 8.0 and Quicken Family Lawyer '99 legal software within the State of Texas.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Under English law, a lawyer merely provides advice which the client is free to make use of or to ignore, and there are plenty of legal self-help books.
The same is true in the US, however states have legal statutes to prevent a person from giving legal advice who is not a lawyer. Depending on how strict the statutes are, this can pose real problems for self-help legal products.
However, that isn't what this appears to be about. Copyright is a federal matter, and the lawyer is licensed to practice law in the US, so that's not where the complaint seems to be coming from.
Apparently several of the motions always fail, but USCG still must respond to them or they lose automatically. This costs USCG and, to a lesser extent, the courts, more money than is necessary. However, I don't see how a lawyer can be sued for advising clients to file a motion that is ultimately unsuccessful, even if he advises thousands of such clients to do so. He never filed any motions, he simply told the people how and suggested they do so. I can't see how he could possibly construed as responsible for the motions.
I would suggest the USCG's bulk litigation practices are the ones that are actually wasting the court's time and money, since the majority of them are completely frivolous and must be responded to by each individual involved.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller