Righthaven Archives
Newspaper copyright enforcer Righthaven LLC received a much-needed boost Thursday when a federal judge refused to dismiss one of its lawsuits over Las Vegas Review-Journal material.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro came in a lawsuit against the Virginia Citizens Defense League Inc., which was sued in September over allegations its website, www.vcdl.org, which focuses on gun rights, infringed on a copyright by displaying without authorization a July 12 Review-Journal story about the Las Vegas police shooting of Erik Scott at a Costco.
The Virginia group and two officials there asked that Navarro dismiss the suit on grounds that the Nevada court lacked jurisdiction over the defendants, that Righthaven lacked standing to sue and that the post was protected by fair use and the “implied license” theory.
In refusing to dismiss the suit, Navarro ruled on the jurisdiction issue that by allegedly posting a story from Nevada on their website, the defendants had “purposefully availed” themselves to jurisdiction in Nevada.
There’s considerable legal debate on this issue, with the defendants unsuccessfully arguing that to be subject to suit in Nevada, they would have had to “expressly aim” their conduct at Nevada viewers of their website.
On the fair use and implied license arguments, Navarro found that at this stage of the litigation there are not enough facts before her to make a definitive ruling.
In another Righthaven newspaper copyright infringement case, Navarro made headlines when she suggested implied license is a potential defense to Righthaven lawsuits. Under this theory, newspapers that encourage readers to share stories online can’t then sue readers for doing just that.
There have been no final rulings on the validity of this theory in the Righthaven cases.
Many newspapers, including the Las Vegas Sun and its sister publication VEGAS INC, encourage readers to share their material — but within limits. The Sun’s user agreement, for instance, says: “Text from our stories can be quoted when linking to our content, but it must not be more than one-tenth of the total word count of the story or 100 words, whichever is lesser.”
On Righthaven’s standing to sue, Navarro found “there is no dispute that plaintiff was the owner of the copyright at the time the complaint was filed.”
She noted, however, that Roger Hunt, chief U.S. District Court judge for Nevada, ruled in another case last week against the Democratic Underground that, according to its lawsuit contract with Review-Journal owner Stephens Media LLC, Righthaven lacked standing to sue over Review-Journal material.
“In light of this recent decision, the parties in this case may need to investigate whether that defective agreement also covered the assignment of the copyrighted work at issue in this case,” Navarro wrote in a footnote in Thursday’s ruling.
The decision by Navarro illustrates a couple things about the Righthaven litigation campaign involving 274 lawsuits since March 2010 over Review-Journal material and Denver Post material.
First, suggestions that all Righthaven/Review-Journal lawsuits would begin falling like dominoes after Hunt’s ruling on the standing issue turned out to be false. In Navarro’s case, at least, she appears to be waiting for the parties to bring the issue to a head in her cases before making her decision on it.
Second, Navarro’s approach is dramatically different than that of U.S. District Judge James Mahan, who’s been an activist when it comes to Righthaven cases.
It was Mahan, on his own initiative, who ordered Righthaven to show cause why one of its lawsuits shouldn’t be dismissed on fair use grounds. He ended up dismissing it on those grounds.
And it was Mahan who ordered Righthaven to show cause why its suit in another case — involving the Pahrump Life blog — shouldn’t be dismissed because he felt it lacked standing to sue under the Righthaven/Stephens Media lawsuit contract.
That was before Hunt and Judge Philip Pro issued final rulings the past two weeks determining Righthaven lacks standing to sue over Review-Journal material.
In other Righthaven developments:
• Even though it was dismissed from the Democratic Underground case over its lack of standing, Righthaven asked Hunt on Thursday for permission to intervene in the case. The case is still active as Hunt is allowing the Democratic Underground to pursue its counterclaim against Stephens Media.
“Stephens Media is now a mere non-exclusive (copyright) licensee with no ownership rights in the copyright and no standing to sue for infringement,” Righthaven attorney Shawn Mangano wrote in Thursday’s request. “Righthaven seeks to intervene as of right in order to protect its ownership interest in the copyright since it is the only party that may presently do so.”
• Righthaven said it would appeal Pro’s ruling dismissing its case against message-board poster Wayne Hoehn and finding against Righthaven on the fair use issue in that case.
• Righthaven on Thursday filed amended certificates of interested parties in its lawsuits over Denver Post material, for the first time naming Denver Post owner MediaNews Group as an interested party. This indicates MediaNews Group shares lawsuit revenue with Righthaven, just as Stephens Media gets a cut of lawsuit revenue over Review-Journal stories. Righthaven’s lawsuit contract with MediaNews Group has not been made public, but all its cases in Colorado are on hold until a judge decides if Righthaven has standing to sue over Denver Post material.