Righthaven is discovering it has no haven for its rights. PaidContent reports that a Nevada federal judge has issued an order allowing one of the bloggers it sued to appoint a receiver who can auction off Righthaven’s assets to pay his legal costs. About the only assets Righthaven seems to have are the copyrights it’s been using to sue on.
The assets in question are the newspapers’ copyrights. Righthaven needs these if it has any hope of persuading an appeals court that it has fixed the original problem that led a court to halt the lawsuits in the first place. In a nutshell, that court said Righthaven couldn’t sue because it didn’t own the copyright and now Righthaven is telling the appeals court , “Wait, we do own the copyright now. Please confirm this so that we can continue our lawsuits and raise some money.”
This puts Righthaven in a dilemma—if it produces those rights, they will be sold and it will be unable to continue its cases in the appeals courts. If it doesn’t, it will be in contempt of court.
The article adds some other amusing news:
In a related order on Monday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Johnston ordered Righthaven’s lawyer and his wife to appear in court on January 5th to explain under oath where the assets are. If the couple doesn’t appear, the judge has authorized US Marshalls to hunt them down and bring them back.
If the Righthaven saga is winding down, hopefully it will provide a clear example to those who would seek to follow in its footsteps that trying to use the courts as a money machine is a losing proposition. Lawsuits should be filed for redress of grievance, not to try to scare people into forking over a few thousand dollars to avoid litigation.
One could argue that Righthaven engaged in fraud–suing websites for violating copyrights that it didn’t actually own. The people who paid Righthaven to settle its claims could sue for their payments back plus damages. Of course, Righthaven claims that it has no assets, but criminal fraud charges could wind some of Righthaven’s executives in jail and its lawyers disbarred.