Legal News

Las Vegas Federal Judge: Righthaven Wrong on Fair Use Argument

By Ashby Jones

When last we checked in on this interesting little company called Righthaven, things were going rather swimmingly.

The company, which files copyright lawsuits chiefly on behalf of two publications, the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post, had just won a jurisdictional battle in a case and was continuing to file suits by the handful against bloggers and others for allegedly violating the newspapers’ copyrights.

But oh what a difference a season or two make.

The Las Vegas-based Righthaven suffered a significant loss on Friday when a federal judge in Las Vegas ruled that an Oregon nonprofit did not infringe on the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s copyrights when it posted without authorization an entire story from the newspaper on its Website. Click here for the story, from the Las Vegas Sun’s Steve Green, who has covered the Righthaven story from the beginning like white on rice.

According to Green’s story, on Friday, U.S. District Judge James Mahan said during a hearing that he planned to dismiss, on fair use grounds, a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against the Center for Intercultural Organizing (CIO), in Portland, Ore.

Mahan said the suit would be dismissed because the nonprofit used it in an educational way, that it didn’t try to use the story to raise money and because the story in question was primarily factual as opposed to being creative, wrote Green.

Interestingly, Mahan also criticized Righthaven’s approach, saying Righthaven’s use of the copyright for the lawsuit actually diminishes the copyright’s worth.

“Righthaven is not using the copyright the same way the R-J used it. Righthaven is using it to support a lawsuit,” Mahan said.

According to Green, it’s the second fair use defeat for Righthaven, though it’s arguably the more significant because it involved an entire story post rather than a partial story post.

Shawn Mangano, an attorney representing Righthaven, said Righthaven would appeal, just as it appealed the earlier fair use ruling. The Ninth Circuit has not yet ruled on the first ruling.

Finally, the money quote in this story came from Mahan, expressing absolutely no surprise in the fact that Righthaven planned to appeal. “I realize this is going to be appealed,” he said. “I tell litigators ‘that’s why God created San Francisco’” — home of the federal appeals court.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 23, 2011 (boomark / email).