Why is there no penalty? Lawyers wasted a lot of billable hours over a suit filed over a copyright claim on facts. If there's no penalty for such frivolous claims, we'll keep having to fight the same fight, wasting money along the way.
That's a good question. The article seems to indicate that there was almost a penalty.
FTA:
> In January, EFF advised Astrolabe that Olson and Eggert would move for sanctions if Astrolabe did not withdraw its complaint. Today's dismissal followed.
In other words, the complaint was dropped only after penalties were threatened.
Thinking about this issue, I see your point, but I'm not sure how far in that direction we should go. In particular, we don't want to create a mechanism that can easily be used to punish whistle-blowers (for example), simply by finding someone willing to declare their complaint to be frivolous.
frivolous is one thing, fraudulent is another. they filed a copyright claim on information that not only do they not own, information that it is not possible to own. this sort of behaviour should be punished.
One can make a honest mistake about the facts and the law. If every time that somebody is mistaken were to be severely punished, suing a large well lawyered entity would be completely impossible, since in the event of loss one will be surely ruined financially by the mandatory punishment. If however one can see that the suit is frivolous or malicious and it was known and explained to them and they still chose to proceed, then the punishment may be due. But in this case it still can be argued that they honestly thought the law was on their side, even if they were wrong.
Astrolabe deliberately filed a complaint but did not serve the defendants. In a sense, they create a huge legal uncertainty which just by itself caused significant damage. This was a clear abuse of an enforcement loophole in the litigation-heavy American justice system.
The mere threat or FUD of full legal action is being used to eliminate competition. If there were ever a case for sanctions, this would definitely be it.
IANAL - Rule 11 - against frivolous lawsuits, ignorance is no defence.
Further, UCLA counsel had already replied to them in reponse to a DMCA takedown notice prior to the main complaint explaining the facts, well before they filed their complaint.... so they can't claim ignorance either.
It's done with, good - as it should be. No need for a witch hunt - but the lawyers who were pushing the issue forward probably should be sanctioned, this was very obviously frivolous and going nowhere.... and they had a professional duty to know that. There's no muddy water here... it's very clear cut.
You have your example backward. Feist v. Rural held that telephone books are not subject to copyright. Just because something was laborious to compile does not make it copyrightable.
Well, many formats of telephone book are copyrightable, particularly the "yellow pages" portions, where selection and arrangement into categories are applied, meeting the "de minimis thought needed to withstand the originality requirement".
This would be a good time to start a site that publishes the lawyer's that come up with such cases.
That would at the least shame some of them from taking up such cases in future.
The telephone directory is not a classic example, but there is some controversy over the copyright claims on regional building codes and WestLaw's legally-citable database of court cases.
