A Nevada newspaper has lost a legal ruling in a controversial case involving efforts to protect the paper’s contents from being posted on other Web sites. A federal judge in Las Vegas ruled October 18, 2010 that a copyright enforcement company could not sue under U.S. copyright laws because the material cited fell under the fair use exception.

The company filing suit was Righthaven LLC of Las Vegas, which is affiliated with the newspaper in the case, the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The firm has become known as a frequent copyright plaintiff in lawsuits involving uses of articles in the paper without giving defendants any prior warning before they are sued.

U.S. Senate Candidate Among Those Sued

Some of those who have been sued had quoted all or only parts of Review-Journal articles. One was Nevada Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle, who republished a story from the newspaper on her campaign Web site. (Ironically, the paper had endorsed her candidacy.) Righthaven also has sued Web operators for articles in the paper that users have reposted as well as the statfox sports betting site for reprinting Review-Journal articles on Super Bowl wagering without permission.

The defendant in this specific case was Michael Nelson, a real estate broker doing business as Realty One who quoted the first eight sentences from a 30-sentence April 30, 2010 Review-Journal article, “Program may level housing sale odds,” on his blog. Aside from citing part of the story, Nelson provided a link to the full article on the newspaper’s site. Righthaven maintained he had infringed on the copyright by not previously obtaining authorization to use the article.

“Granting the real estate company’s motion to dismiss, the court said that the portion of the article posted contained factual news reporting about a new federal housing program and that posting of the copied portion was unlikely to affect the market for the entire copyrighted work,” Nathan Pollard wrote in “Posting of News Article on Real Estate Blog Was Fair Use; Righthaven Loses” in the October 26, 2010 Daily Report for Executives.

No Harm to Newspaper Found

“The court finds that Nelson’s use of the copyrighted material is likely to have little to no effect on the market for the copyrighted news article,” U.S. District Judge Larry R. Hicks for the district of Nevada wrote in his opinion.

An affiliate of the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s parent company provided funding for Righthaven, whose founder and CEO is Steve Gibson, an attorney in the city. Righthaven’s method of operation is to file suits for infringement based on newspaper copyrights which it has acquired.

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