5-Years Ago Righthaven Unleashed Copyright Trolling Operation; Gibson Still Practicing Law

Journalist Steve Green, formerly with the Las Vegas Sun and now with the Orange County Register, who worked tirelessly reporting the depths and doings and eventually the complete undoing of Righthaven LLC has written a long follow up five years to the day that Righthaven began its copyright trolling scheme. If you were a follower of this website from 2010 to 2012, back during Righthaven's "shakedown" lawsuit heyday, the memories will flood back ten fold, particularly Righthaven's numerous PR blunders and the key cases that defeated Righthaven and ultimately threw them into bankruptcy.

Some of Righthaven's worst PR blunders included filing their typical "without warning" lawsuits against a woman who had a blog that was written from a cat's point of view and mistakenly posted a Review-Journal article about a bird sanctuary. There was also the suit filed against U.S. Senate Candidate Sharron Angle. After being sued for posting an R-J editorial and story to her website, the R-J endorsed Angle. Righthaven's tide-turning PR blunder, however, was a lawsuit against 20-year old Brian Hill, a blogger from North Carolina who suffers a mild form of autism, diabetes and hyperactive disorder.

At Chapman forum, 'Righthaven' copyright outfit still controversial five years later

It was five years ago -- March 13, 2010 -- that Righthaven LLC launched its assembly line-like copyright lawsuit campaign over newspaper content. Righthaven is long gone, but the controversies it stirred up linger today.
Righthaven was a Las Vegas company created to sue over material copied without authorization from news websites, its partners being the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post. Between March 2010 and June 2011 it filed 275 lawsuits over content from those papers in federal courts in Nevada, Colorado and South Carolina.
Righthaven was a company, not a law firm, and it ultimately fell apart after defense attorneys discovered it lacked authority to file the lawsuits.

See: Orange County Register article in full
See: Righthaven archives from VEGAS INC/Las Vegas Sun
See: March 2010 Righthaven lawsuits

Righthaven LLC Issues Bankruptcy Warning; Who Could Have Foreseen?

Righthaven Says it Might Have to File for Bankruptcy

Despite its backing by the billionaire Warren Stephens family, Las Vegas copyright lawsuit filer Righthaven LLC warned today it may have to file for bankruptcy because of a series of setbacks in its litigation campaign.
The warning came in an emergency request by Righthaven to a federal judge in Las Vegas that he stay his order that Righthaven pay $34,045 in legal fees to attorneys who successfully defended Kentucky message board poster Wayne Hoehn against a Righthaven lawsuit.

See: Related VEGAS INC article

Desperation is never fun to watch, but do read the full article. It's packed with jewels including, "the software could be sold to any one of a host of infringers or other supporting organizations that would attempt to reverse engineer the software in order to devise methods for evading detection."(?) PaidContent.org also writes about this news (See: Righthaven: We Might Have To Declare Bankruptcy) and offers a delightful "plain language version" of Righthaven's emergency filing.

Alert: MediaNews Group Signs on with Righthaven Copyright Trolling Scam

The Righthaven Block List Grows to 178 Newspaper URLS.

The Las Vegas Sun reports that Righthaven LLC is now doing business with MediaNews Group, whose properties include the Denver Post, the San Bernardino Sun, the San Jose Mercury News, the Detroit News, the Salt Lake Tribune and more.

Righthaven Now Working with Media News, Sues Over Denver Post Column

An attorney for Righthaven filed the suit Thursday in federal court in Charleston, S.C. This appears to be the first lawsuit Righthaven has filed in a federal court outside of Nevada, where since March it has filed 179 copyright infringement lawsuits.
Thursday’s suit would seem to raise the stakes in Righthaven’s litigation campaign as it now involves Media News, which calls itself the nation’s second-largest media company, with major newspaper operations in Colorado, Northern and Southern California, Salt Lake City, El Paso, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Detroit and elsewhere.

Read: Article in Full

It was reported in January 2010 that Affiliated Media Inc., the holding company for MediaNews Group Inc. newspapers, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.