The Equally Ugly Sibling of the Patent Troll

By: Philip Zies

The intellectual property world is pretty familiar with patent trolls. For those of you who aren’t familiar with patent trolls, however, I should make clear that I am not talking about a fairytale character that lives under a bridge, I am not talking about a little plastic doll experiencing an extreme version of a bad-hair day, and I am not talking about a monster you might have to defeat in a roll playing game. Patent trolls are, typically, individuals (often patent attorneys) or corporate entities (often owned/controlled by patent attorneys) that acquire patents for the sole purpose of suing a perceived infringer of the patent being acquired.

Well it seems that there is a new troll in town, and that new troll is called a copyright troll. What is a copyright troll, you ask? A copyright troll, much like a patent troll, is an individual or corporate entity that acquires copyrights for the sole purpose of suing a perceived infringer of the copyright being acquired.

In a recent article published in the Las Vegas Sun, a company by the name of Righthaven, LLC, was portrayed as a copyright troll. Righthaven, LLC, it was reported, “troll[s]” the internet for perceived infringement of stories originally published in the Las Vegas Review-Journal; acquires the copyright to the allegedly infringed story from the Las Vegas Review-Journal as well as the right to sue for past, present and future infringement of the story; and then sues the alleged infringer.

Let’s all hope that we don’t have to read about newer and uglier additions to the Compendium of Intellectual Property Monsters.