New challenges for Mathew Higbee and his clients

by Paul Alan Levy

About a month ago, I blogged about a new variant in Matthew Higbee’s high-volume copyright enforcement practice on behalf of photographers, in which he was pursuing the hosts of online forums where users had posted copyrighted photographs or deep links to copyrighted photographs, taking advantage of those hosts who had failed to preserve their DMCA immunity by not registering a DMCA agent. (Note his response in the comment section, which does not merit a reply). I gave Higbee a chance to withdraw his client’s claims; however, Higbee had previously told me that my arguments about non-liability for infringement in an identical case were “delusional,” so we decided to give Higbee a chance to explain to a judge in what way these defenses were delusional, that is, in response to an action for a declaratory judgment.

I confess that, in filing that lawsuit, I wondered whether Higbee had ever warned Luong that he would not necessarily get to make the final decision whether his demand would end up in litigation, in that the very aggressiveness of Higbee’s demand letters, coupled with persistent nagging from paralegals to offer a settlement or face immediate litigation, sets up his clients to be sued for a declaratory judgment of non-infringement. That speculation proved prescient, because Higbee’s immediate response to the lawsuit was to offer to have his client covenant not to sue Schlossberg for infringement. Higbee also told me that he had offered to defend Luong against the declaratory judgment action for free. It appears, however, that even such a generous offer was not enough to hold onto Luong as a copyright infringement claimant in this case. A settlement agreement has been signed; because there is no longer a case or controversy, the lawsuit has now been dismissed. Many thanks to Phil Malone and to Stanford third-year law student Alyssa Picard for their work on this case; and thanks for Kevin Schlossberg for having the gumption to stand up to Higbee's bullying.