The Court ruled against Righthaven, a company which had a deal with Las Vegas Review Journal newspaper owner Stephens Media. Righthaven was assigned copyright by Stephens Media in articles which Righthaven had found being used online without permission.
Righthaven could not bring copyright infringement proceedings against Wayne Hoehn, who republished a complete article owned by Stephens Media, the court said, because its deal with the publisher did not give it full copyright in the articles concerned.
"Righthaven does not have any exclusive rights in the work and thus does not have standing to bring an infringement action," the US court ruling (17-page / 369KB PDF) said.
"The Court therefore will grant [Hoehn's] motion to dismiss [Righthaven's copyright infringement claims] for lack of standing," the ruling said.
Hoehn had posted an entire editorial from the Las Vegas Review Journal on the madjacksports.com website, the ruling said.
Righthaven had argued that its agreement with Stephens gave it the right to sue for copyright infringement of Stephens' articles. The court said that Righthaven did not have the right to sue because the agreement did not hand over any of Stephens' copyright rights to it.
"The rights in the copyrighted work retained by Stephens Media deprive Righthaven of everything except the right to pursue alleged infringers, a right that is still subject to Stephens Media’s oversight," the US court said. "Accordingly, Righthaven does not possess an exclusive right in the work and therefore does not have standing to bring a suit for infringement."
"Ownership of the exclusive right to reproduce the copyrighted work is necessary to bring a suit for infringement based on reproduction of the copyrighted work," the ruling said.
The Court said that even if it had ruled on Hoehn's reproduction of the full article it would have established that it had been copied legitimately under the US copyright laws' 'fair use' exemption.
In the US the 'fair use' exemption law allows copyright material to be reproduced for the purposes of research and education, commentary, criticism and reporting.
Hoehn's entire reproduction of the article constituted 'fair use' because he did not profit from his use of the editorial, the nature of the editorial piece was not a "purely creative work ... within the core of intended copyright protection" and because Righthaven had failed to produce evidence showing Hoehn's use was harmful, the ruling said.
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