Righthaven Ordered To Forfeit Its Intellectual Property

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."

Comments

Finally

[Speeddymon]

Maybe all this nonsense with patent trolling will cease & desist ... pun intended.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Not until the patent decays into the copyright can this ruling by applied. Unfortunately, physics has yet to ever witness such a transmutation as both patent and copyright objects are currently believed to be stable with a half-life longer than that of the observed universe.

Re:There we go..

[SJHillman]

Nope, it was auctioned off.

Yay!

[Black Parrot]

The Feds finally got *something* right on the topic of intellectual property.

Maybe we can teach them a second trick.

Dear Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

All your bridge are belong to us.

Re:temporary

[Sique]

The judge found this business model to be illegal (e.g. having no legal basis to work on). So why making something illegal illegal? That's like forbidding criminality.