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Re: Attorney fees


From: Hyman Rosen
Subject: Re: Attorney fees
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:46:13 -0400
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 (Windows/20080213)

rjack wrote:
This post on the William Patry copyright blog should strike fear into the
hearts of the Monsoon gang and the SFLC.

"When a plaintiff is suing just for money and he has no ground at all for
obtaining a money judgment, the fact that his rights may have been violated does not save his suit from being adjudged frivolous. (page 5)"

The Patry blog post is here:
<http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2008/07/judge-posner-on-attorneys-fees-to.html>

From the Petit discussion of the case:
<http://scrivenerserror.blogspot.com/2008/07/8710a.html>
    "The problem here is that Judge Posner's decision rather
     misleadingly seems to concern only copyright law, and will
     thus be twisted all out of recognition by both the
     extremists in the copyright/fair use debate and possibly
     the tort reform wingnuts.
     ...
     The real problem with Eagle is that it is too easy to wrench
     the juicy bits from context for ideological purposes, because
     it is founded on the wrong rule of decision."

And from the decision itself:
    "It is apparent that the suit was filed in order to cramp the
     style of a competitor and perhaps warn off any other employee
     of Eagle who might have the temerity to set up in competition
     with it.
     ...
     The suit could not have been brought in good faith...
     ...
     So the suit was frivolous even if there was a copyright
     violation. When a plaintiff..."

Now, suing someone for monetary damages because they have been
distributing copyrighted works without a license is exactly what
normal copyright cases are all about. Trying to twist this Eagle
case to match GPL copyright infringement suits is laughable.


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