Righthaven Dismisses Lawsuit Against Reporter; Still Seems Confused About The Whole Thing

A few hours ago, we wrote about Righthaven's painfully stupid lawsuit against Eriq Gardner claiming copyright infringement for an article he wrote about a previous Righthaven lawsuit, that included an image from Righthaven's own legal filing. After widespread mocking, it appears that Righthaven has realized it totally and completely screwed this one up, though it seemed to take a little while. This morning, reporter Joe Mullin called Righthaven CEO Steve Gibson, and he insisted this was going to be "litigated before the court," and seemed to suggest that Righthaven was confident it was right here.

Clearly, others in the Righthaven office talked some sense in to Gibson because sometime after that (but apparently still in the morning), Righthaven filed for a voluntary dismissal of the lawsuit, with prejudice (meaning it can't file again). Of course, Righthaven even screwed that up, with its initial filing claiming it was to be done without prejudice in one point and with it in another. Eventually it got it right.

As for Righthaven's explanation, contrary to the claims of its CEO, the two Righthaven lawyers who Nate Anderson at Ars Technica spoke to, Steven Ganim and Shawn Mangano, appear to give a totally different story. They claim that they realized it was a mistake as soon as they heard about it, and claimed this was just a "clerical mistake," and they never meant to sue a reporter writing about their cases. That is, frankly, completely unbelievable. They filed a federal lawsuit against an individual, including an exhibit which clearly showed the entire original article from Gardner. Either they didn't read their own exhibits, didn't understand what they were doing, or knew full well that they were suing someone who was reporting on their own case. I can't see how any of those options makes Righthaven look particularly credible.

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