In a huge victory against copyright trolls, a judge has thrown out the lawsuit filed by Righthaven against Democratic Underground. This was the key case where (after lots of stalling), Righthaven eventually revealed the strategic agreement between it and Stephens Media, which basically shows the copyright assignment to Righthaven was a fraud. All Stephens really transferred was a "right to sue," and that's not a transferable right under copyright law. As we had expected, the judge relies on the Silvers vs. Sony Pictures case, which notes that you can't assign just the right to sue.

I would suggest that Judge Roger Hunt is not particularly pleased with Righthaven. He's also allowing Democratic Underground lawyers to seek attorneys' fees from Righthaven and Stephens Media.

This will likely kill off most of the remaining Righthaven cases in Nevada. While not all are handled by Judge Hunt, you can be quite certain that all the other judges in the court will be aware of this. The impact on the Colorado cases isn't as certain, but all of those cases are under a single judge who is equally upset at Righthaven, and reviewing similar issues. I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar end result.

Righthaven could (and might?) appeal, but it's going to be difficult to reverse this. Furthermore, in theory Righthaven could come up with a new agreement with Stephens Media and continue suing, but the court already expressed its doubts about the weak attempt by the two companies to "amend" the existing agreement, suggesting that it was just "cosmetic adjustments" that the court did not believe would change the outcome.

What may be interesting is to see if any of the dozens of folks who already settled come after Righthaven now and demand their money back... That could make for an interesting followup legal battle. All in all, this is a huge win against copyright trolling.