Court of Nevada doesn’t take kindly on copyright troll

The Court of Nevada has required Righthaven, the plaintiff in a copyright infringement case, to demonstrate why the alleged infringement isn’t part of the Fair Use exception in US copyright law. Failure by Righthaven to do so in a specially scheduled hearing, the judge warns, “Shall result in the imposition of sanction for that party.”

The case at hand is one in which Righthaven has sued the Centre for Intercultural Organizing, based in Portland, Oregon, an organisation that acts on behalf of refugees en immigrants. This group had republished, without the consent of the newspaper, an article about police treatment of illegal aliens in Las Vegas.

Righthaven’s only purpose appears to be to track down copyright infringement of newspapers’ content and scare the alleged infringer into settling. We’ve reported on Righthaven’s approach before. The Electronic Frontier Foundation was eager to represent defendants in their cases in order to have courts rule on their approach and seek judicial clarity on the admissibility of such legal threats.

Back to the case at hand, Righthaven has demanded that CIO, a non-profit organisation, pay statutory damages, they aim to seize the domain on which the article was published, and they seek personal and financial data about the person that posted the article and about everyone the article was discussed.

CIO defended by stating that, being based in Oregon, it does not fall under the jurisdiction of Nevada’s court.

The Nevada judge took things even one step further by pointing to the Fair Use provision, thus deciding to give the case a whole new dynamic.

This doesn’t bode well for Righhaven: in a previous Righthaven case, the defendant was acquitted because the court ruled that Fair Use did indeed apply.

Source: Ars Technica