Notorious copyright trolls Righthaven LLC are in the doghouse after US Marshals were instructed to relieve them of $63,000 in assets to pay back someone they tried to stiff. A writ of execution from Wayne Hoehn’s attorneys requests the amount for various legal fees that were incurred during the case that accused Hoehn of using “copyrighted” material.
For anyone not enamored to the way this particular group of trolls does it, here goes…
Righthaven LLC is a co-venture between lawyer Steve Gibson (who you can see on right) and the Stephens Media Group that encompasses the Las Vegas Review Journal amongst others. Their scheme worked by Stephens assigning the copyright on all stories to Righthaven who went after blogs and sites that repost stories. Before you ask no, they didn’t tell the sites to take the stories down first. Instead, they went for the jugular and demanded up to $150k in damages and the domain name.
Of the 275 sites targeted, which included online gambling industry sites MajorWager, TheRX.com and SBR Marketing, 70 or 80 sites paid several thousands in out-of-court settlements. The bankruptcy proceedings have only come about thanks to certain defendants realizing that what they were doing is just plain wrong. Otherwise, who knows how many people would be cursing at the little green beast they met in the courtroom. Complete with slime and dirty Scott Lewis branded cloth to wipe it off with.
Hoehn’s suit was one of three that were thrown out this summer by a judge in Vegas on both fair use and standing grounds. Hoehn was left with a $35k legal bill he had no intention paying. Randazza Legal Group added to this with $30k in fees racked up as they tried to get the original $34,045. With interest the amount stands at an impressive $63,720.80. It looks mightily impressive from where we’re standing anyway. Perhaps one of the more alarming facts to come from this case is Righthaven still paying attorneys to carry out litigation in Nevada, Colorado and South Carolina. Do they ever learn or is the company really run by a small group of Macaws?
Righthaven will have to crawl back to the dark, dank cavern from which it came from where we’re assuming Lewis will have cooked up a cauldron of whatever it is trolls eat. We’ve lumped it on a KFC-style bargain bucket.
