VEGAS INC archives
With the holiday weekend under way, Las Vegas copyright lawsuit filer Righthaven LLC appeared to remain in danger Friday of seeing its intellectual property auctioned off.
That’s because the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco had not acted through Friday night on Righthaven’s "emergency motion" filed Tuesday to block the threatened auction.
So far, a court-appointed receiver has seized Righthaven’s website domain name with plans to auction it. The receiver through Friday night hadn’t announced the auction procedures or when the sales process would begin.
A court has also ordered Righthaven to surrender its 278 copyrights to the receiver to be auctioned. With the appeals court not yet acting on Righthaven’s appeal, it’s unknown if or when Righthaven will turn over the copyrights or whether its CEO will be forced to appear in court to sign them over.
The copyrights cover content assigned to Righthaven by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post, as well as some unrelated sports betting content and two porn movies.
With six federal judges ruling Righthaven lacked standing to sue over the newspaper material, it’s doubtful the company’s federal copyright registrations have much value.
They could be purchased by Righthaven lawsuit defendants, however, for the purpose of once and for all closing Righthaven’s pending lawsuits and to cancel its pending appeals of adverse court decisions.
With no copyrights, Righthaven may have nothing to sue or appeal over.
Righthaven since March 2010 has filed 275 lawsuits alleging infringement of material from the R-J and the Post.
But a series of legal defeats in court has left Righthaven in financial distress after it was ordered to pay $216,355 in defendants’ legal fees — with more fee awards likely in other pending cases.
The financial problems are the reason one of the defendants, Wayne Hoehn, gained the court order to have Righthaven’s assets auctioned off by a receiver so he could recover some of the $63,720 he is owed.
Righthaven, in the meantime, appeared to be suffering through additional financial problems this week.
Its attorney handling Righthaven’s lone lawsuit in South Carolina, Edward Bertele, asked to withdraw from the case after Righthaven defaulted on its payment obligations to him.
"Under the present conditions, i.e. that Righthaven has failed to abide by material terms of its engagement and is in receivership, it would be a financial hardship for counsel to continue in his representation of the company in this matter,” Bertele wrote in his filing.
Also, the Las Vegas company that manages and co-owns Righthaven, Net Sortie Systems LLC, is listed as being in “default” status with the Nevada Secretary of State’s office.
Net Sortie Systems is owned by Las Vegas attorney and Righthaven CEO Steven Gibson. It appeared to be in default after missing a Nov. 30 deadline to file its current list of officers and pay its annual fees to the Secretary of State, which handles incorporations in Nevada.
The other co-owner of Righthaven is an Arkansas company controlled by the same investors who own the Review-Journal. That company, SI Content Monitor LLC of Little Rock, is in good standing with the Arkansas Secretary of State.