Righthaven Archives
A copyright infringement lawsuit over sports-betting content involving Righthaven LLC was thrown out of court Friday by a Nevada federal judge.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Kent Dawson in Las Vegas dismissed Righthaven’s lawsuit against Rick Allec and RX Advertising Inc. LLC, who are associated with a website called therxforum.com.
The suit was noteworthy among the 276 Righthaven copyright infringement lawsuits filed since March 2010 because it was the only one that didn’t involve content from the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post.
Instead, Righthaven sued over an alleged infringement of information used by sports bettors and originally published by Florida-based Stevo Design Inc.
Lawsuit records show Stevo Design, headed by CEO Steven Budin, sells sports handicapping information and analysis by various author handicappers through scores of websites, including ATSadvice.com, Gametimereport.com and Vegasadvisors.com.
Similar to its newspaper lawsuits, Righthaven obtained a copyright assignment from Stevo Design and then used that assignment to sue Allec and his company, claiming they had misappropriated Stevo Design's content.
Dawson, in his ruling Friday, said the copyright assignment from Stevo Design to Righthaven was flawed — same as the copyright assignments from the Review-Journal and the Post to Righthaven. The problem, he said, was that they didn't transfer to Righthaven true ownership of the material Righthaven would later sue over.
Dawson’s ruling Friday was based on Righthaven’s lawsuit contract with Stevo Design, called the Strategic Alliance Agreement.
''Because the SAA prevents Righthaven from obtaining any of the exclusive rights necessary to maintain standing in a copyright infringement action, the court finds that Righthaven lacks standing in this case,'' Dawson wrote.
Dawson didn’t address another issue that appears to cripple the ability of Righthaven to pursue its lawsuits: that Righthaven’s interests in its copyrights have been seized by a receiver so they can be auctioned to raise money for paying Righthaven creditors.
Dawson’s order confirms that Righthaven's sports betting copyrights now held by the receiver likely have no real value, as they are based on now-invalidated copyright assignments.
Still, the company’s federal copyright registrations to the sports betting material may have some memorabilia value or be of value to the defendants in the Allec case to ensure they don’t get sued again, attorneys say.
In another case this week in which Stevo Design was the plaintiff asserting both copyright and trademark claims, U.S. District Judge Larry Hicks in Reno dismissed the suit, but for a different reason.
In that case, Stevo Design was represented by attorneys at the law firm Dickinson Wright PLLC, including Righthaven CEO Steven Gibson, a lawyer at the Las Vegas office of the law firm.
The defendant, SBR Marketing Ltd., is in Costa Rica and operates a website, sbrforum.com , as well as a bulletin board allowing users to read and contribute sports information, Hicks wrote in his ruling.
The problem with the lawsuit, Hicks ruled, is that federal copyright and trademark law don’t cover infringements that occur entirely outside the United States.
"As alleged in the complaint, all infringement took place on SBR’s website operated entirely from Costa Rica,” he wrote. "There are no allegations of any direct infringement within the United States. Further, Stevo has failed to identify a single user of SBR’s website (who) lives in the United States and uploaded the (sports) handicap reports. Stevo’s complaint focuses on the effects of the alleged infringement and its impact in the United States. However, such allegations are insufficient to constitute a claim under either the Copyright Act or the Lanham Trademark Act.’’