Corporate Counsel has been following the challenges faced by the now infamous “copyright troll” Righthaven since it was founded in 2010 by attorney Steve Gibson (and partially backed by Stephens Media, the Las Vegas-based publisher of that city’s dominant daily newspaper, the Review-Journal).
As described by the the WSJ Law Blog, the company “surfs the web” looking for infringement of the newspaper’s copyright, then sues after purchasing copyright. Defendants “typically get no warning, no take-down request, just a suit.” The suits are for typically around $75,000, the blog noted, but defendants are quickly offered settlement for a small fraction of that amount.
