Righthaven judge: Review-Journal ‘implied license’ defense may have merit

[Chris_]

Righthaven judge: Review-Journal ‘implied license’ defense may have merit
^{By Steve Green
Monday, Sept. 20, 2010 | 11:39 a.m.}

Las Vegas copyright enforcement company Righthaven LLC has suffered a legal setback, with the newest federal judge in Las Vegas ruling one of the Righthaven defendants may have a meritorious defense in arguing the Las Vegas Review-Journal provides an "implied license" for the online reposting of its stories.

Navarro in her ruling wrote: "The defendant has reasonably asserted that the plaintiff’s conduct may have constituted an implied license and that the defendant may have properly inferred that the (copyright) owner consented to the use, especially in light of the established and accepted custom of users freely and openly sharing certain information posted on the Internet."

The plaintiff's conduct the judge referred to, according to the Lewis and Roca attorneys, is that: "The Las Vegas Review-Journal offered the allegedly infringed work (story) to the world for free when it was originally published. It encouraged people to save links to the work or to send links to the work to others anywhere in the world at no cost and without restriction. The Las Vegas Review-Journal website also enables third parties to 'right click' and copy the text of articles on the site. Accordingly, based on this implied license, the allegedly infringing copy was, in fact, authorized by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and therefore, is not an infringement."

Las Vegas Sun

[thundley4]

The Las Vegas Review-Journal website also enables third parties to 'right click' and copy the text of articles on the site

Interesting. That is a valid point for implied consent, since some websites do disable right-clicking.