Righthaven

Righthaven

Righthaven LLC was a copyright enforcement company founded in early 2010. Based in Las Vegas, Nevada; it entered agreements from its partner newspapers after finding that their content had been copied to online sites without permission, in order to engage in litigation against the site owners for copyright infringement. The lawsuits were much criticized by commentators, who describe the activity as copyright trolling and the company as a "lawsuit factory". Righthaven LLC's CEO, Steven Gibson, who is currently a partner at Las Vegas law firm Gibson & True LLP, regularly spoke to the media about Righthaven.Although its strategy was successful at first, it was undone in 2011 when several judges held that, since Righthaven didn't actually own the copyrights, it had no standing to sue for infringement. The company was forced into receivership in November 2011 due to outstanding legal fees to a successful defendant. In January 2012, its domain name, righthaven.com, was sold at auction to help satisfy its debts. In March 2013, Stephens Media bought back what copyrights they had transferred to Righthaven, allowing the Righthaven Receivership Estate to pay off legal fees.

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