Righthaven Defies Court In Domain Name Ruling

Hugh Pickens writes "Copyright troll Righthaven makes their money by coercing defendants of alleged copyright infringement into settling with them with threats of $150,000 in damages and forfeiture of the defendants' website domain names. Now EFF reports that Chief Judge Hunt of the federal court in Nevada, which is overseeing more than 200 Righthaven copyright cases, has dismissed Righthaven's merit-less claim to seize its victim's domain names. Righthaven contended that the mere hosting of any infringing material meant that the entire domain name was forfeit but the judge rejected that claim, explaining that the 'Court finds that Righthaven's request for such relief fails as a matter of law and is dismissed.' But now Righthaven has filed a new copyright case in Nevada federal court that not only demands forfeiture of the domain name but has asked the Court to 'order the surrender to Righthaven of all hardware, software, electronic media and domains, including the Domain used to store, disseminate and display the unauthorized versions of any and all copyrighted works.' The new complaint also asserts that Righthaven holds the 'exclusive rights' to Stephens Media news articles, despite the Strategic Alliance Agreement showing that Stephens Media retains these rights."

Comments

With/without prejudice?

[Shoten]

If the original claim was dismissed "without prejudice," that doesn't preclude Righthaven from starting it all over again. If that's what has happened, then what they're doing isn't defiance of the court as much as trying to buy their way out of a bluff, proverbially speaking. Granted, it's not too likely that they'll succeed, but the idea of asking for all the "offending" infrastructure along with the domain name is to put a Sword of Damocles over the heads of the defendants so that if they lose, they'll lose everything.