Righthaven Llc v. Wayne Hoehn

Abraham Lincoln told a story about a lawyer who tried to establish that a calf had five legs by calling its tail a leg. But the calf had only four legs, Lincoln observed, because calling a tail a leg does not make it so. Before us is a case about a lawyer who tried to establish that a company owned a copyright by drafting a contract calling the company the copyright owner, even though the company lacked the rights associated with copyright ownership. Heeding Lincoln’s wisdom, and the requirements of the Copyright Act, we conclude that merely calling someone a copyright owner does not make it so.

Plaintiff Righthaven LLC filed separate copyright infringement suits against defendants Wayne Hoehn and Thomas DiBiase for posting articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal online without authorization. The two cases have been consolidated on appeal. In each of the cases, the district court concluded that Righthaven lacked standing to sue for infringement because it was not the owner of any of the exclusive rights in the news articles required for standing under the Copyright Act and our decision in Silvers v. Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc., 402 F.3d 881, 890 (9th Cir.2005)…