Miami Heat Owner Hit With $155,000 In Legal Fees After Losing His Bogus Copyright Infringement Lawsuit

from the costly-buffoonery dept

Miami Heat part-owner Ranaan Katz will be parting with a bit of his fortune because he is a censorious blowhard who doesn't know when to quit.

Back in 2012, Katz got all sensitive about a blog that posted some court documents he didn't want published. To add imagined insult to imagined injury, the blog also posted a less-than-flattering photo of Katz. This one, to be exact:

Katz first tried to sue the blogger for defamation. That didn't go especially well for the public figure, so his lawyers argued (unsuccessfully) that the owner of an NBA team was not a public figure. This didn't work either.

Katz tried a "fresh" approach -- one that has been used by others with similar censorious motivations. He went the copyright infringement route. He purchased the copyright to the unflattering picture and filed an infringement lawsuit against the blogger (and Google, which hosted the blog). He also threatened to sue the blogger's lawyers, because Ranaan Katz has yet to discover a hole he couldn't make bigger.

And, for some ungodly reason, he nearly won. His barefaced effort to use copyright protection as a blunt "shut the fuck up" weapon was humored by a lower court, which issued a ridiculously broad injunction against the blogger. But upon later review, the district court decided the use of the photo was clearly fair use.

Now, he's on the hook for $155,000 in legal fees -- something not always awarded to prevailing parties in copyright cases. But Katz's own actions pushed the culpability needle in his own direction, as Eric Goldman reports.

Last year, the court rejected Katz’s copyright claim:

"a reasonable trier of fact could reach only one conclusion: that Defendant’s use of the photograph was fair, and did not constitute copyright infringement…"

(Note: Katz has appealed that ruling to the 11th Circuit).

After that conclusion, unsurprisingly the court granted the 17 USC 505 fee shift to the defendant and awarded the defendant $152,433.68 in attorneys’ fees plus another $2,403.50 in costs.

The court doesn't care much for Katz's actions:

Plaintiff holds the copyright to an unflattering photograph of himself which Defendant published as part of highly critical blog articles she wrote about Plaintiff. Plaintiff purchased the photograph only after he realized Defendant’s use of it in her blog. Plaintiff’s purchase of the photograph was, from his perspective, to “stop this atrocity” of Defendant using the picture in her critical blog.

As explained by Magistrate Judge Chris M. McAliley in her Report and Recommendation recommending granting summary judgment in favor of Defendant:

Plaintiff is a businessman who testified that he considers the Photo “ugly” and “candid and embarrassing.” He does not claim to be a celebrity and does not claim Magriso’s (the original copyright holder’s) market as his own. Not surprisingly, Plaintiff has not tried to sell or license the Photo to anyone. Rather, Plaintiff testified that he obtained the Assignment of Copyright “[b]ecause I wanted to stop this atrocity.” (Plaintiff views the transfer of copyright as “a correction - correction of a mistake that happened.”). He has not used the Photo other than in this litigation, and has done so here to prevent its publication.

[...]

As Judge McAliley recognized in her Report and Recommendation, no reasonable fact finder could find for the Defendant. Plaintiff was privy to all the facts which led to summary judgment in Defendant’s favor from the outset of the litigation. He was fully aware when he filed the suit that he had no intent to profit from his copyright, nor was he a victim of any economic damages from Defendant’s use. The fact that the Court found three out of four factors weighed in favor of Defendant and the other was neutral clearly indicates that Plaintiff’s attempts to stymie Defendant’s speech are precisely what Section 107 is designed to protect against.

Even better, the court calls him out for using copyright as a weapon.

Instead of using the law for its intended purposes of fostering ideas and expression, Plaintiff obtained the photograph’s copyright solely for the purpose of suppressing Defendant’s free speech. Unsurprisingly, Plaintiff argues that protecting his rights under the Copyright Act was his sole motivation for filing this suit. [D.E. 187 at 13]. That assertion is rather dubious. Plaintiff has characterized this action as “just one battle” in a “malicious war.” [D.E. 187 at 1]. While Plaintiff might view it necessary to remove his unflattering picture to “stop this atrocity” [D.E. 148 at 23], he may not resort to abusive methods to do so.

Copyright as censorship. Only this time, someone's actually out a fair bit of cash for abusing the system. That, in and of itself, is an anomaly.

Filed Under: attorneys' fees, copyright, copyright as censorship, criticism, free speech, ranaan katz
Companies: miami heat

Miami Heat Owner Now Threatening To Separately Sue The Lawyer Defending Blogger Who Linked To Unflattering Image

from the the-plot-thickens dept

So... remember that story we just had about Raanan Katz, a real estate developer and a minority owner of the Miami Heat suing a blogger for defamation (and seeking to have her entire blog shut down and stop her from future posting) and then for copyright infringement over a hotlink to an "unflattering" photo of Katz? We'd mentioned that the blogger was defended by lawyer Marc Randazza, who has now revealed that Katz's lawyers are now threatening to sue him directly if he doesn't give up confidential attorney-client communications.

Katz's lawyers sent Randazza a "draft complaint" they say they are prepared to file against him, claiming that he "acted in concert" with the blogger, and "substantially assisted or encouraged her in unlawful activities or have given substantial assistance to her in accomplishing a tortious result, and your own conduct, separately considered, constitutes a breach of duty."

Randazza has responded, in court as part of the ongoing lawsuit, asking for a protective order against this "threatened litigation," which Randazza suggests is really intended to get access to communications between him and his client, breaking lawyer-client confidentiality.

This letter seeks discovery of facts and circumstances outside of the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure.... This letter seeks exculpatory data from a Defendant's attorney which is clearly attorney-client communications. In order to avoid being sued by RKA, defense counsel must tell RKA's lawyers how and why defense counsel did not assist or promote Defendant's critical blogging about the RKA Plaintiffs.

Given the activity in this case already, this certainly feels like an attempt to bury the case in more paperwork. We've seen this kind of thing before, with wealthy individuals who file a bunch of lawsuits, including against the lawyers who defend those they sue. It certainly seems like an attempt to create a nuisance, rather than to address any actual legal conflict (and, yes, to Katz's lawyers: that's an opinion).

Filed Under: civil procedure, confidentiality, defamation, marc randazza, raanan katz
Companies: miami heat

Miami Heat Owner Sues Blogger & Google Over 'Unflattering' Photo

from the this-isn't-going-to-end-well dept

What is it with super rich sports owners and SLAPP suits? Remember Redskins owner Dan Snyder? Well here's a situation that seems even more ridiculous. Ranaan Katz is a minority owner of the Miami Heat, who just won the NBA championship. You might think he'd be pretty happy right now. Instead, he's suing a blogger and Google, claiming a copyright violation over of an "unflattering photo." Seeing as the photo in question is now quite newsworthy, here it is (and we're happy to explain fair use theories to Katz's lawyers, if they'd like):
The full story is even more ridiculous as you dig into the details. It turns out this is the second time that Katz has gone after this blogger. The first time was for defamation. For what? For running a blog that talked about Katz and his company... and, from the sound of things, posted legal documents that apparently Katz didn't want posted.

Where it gets really bizarre is the massive overreach on the defamation side of things. Because the bar for defamation on a public figure it quite high, Katz's lawyers claim that he's not a public figure -- despite being an owner of the Miami Heat, despite being a well-known successful real estate developer, and despite the fact that there's a street named after him and an "official day" in his honor. Instead, his lawyers have argued that getting the press to report on Katz's legal overreach is an attempt "to make Katz a public figure" even though he clearly is one and has been one. Either way, the blogger, represented by Marc Randazza, responded strongly to the ridiculousness of Katz' original lawsuit. You can see that response below, calling out the fact that a demand for an injunction against any future publication on the blog (as Katz requests) is clear prior restraint and based on no accepted legal theory in a defamation case.

Separate from that lawsuit, it looks like Katz and his lawyers have now tried a second approach, which appears to be an attempt to use the DMCA to censor. He claimed that the "unflattering image" above violates his copyright. A DMCA takedown was apparently issued to Google, who refused to comply. So now both the blogger and Google have been sued. Of course, it's unclear to me how he even holds the copyright in the photo, since he didn't take it. Either way, given the previous actions in the case, it certainly feels like this is a SLAPP-style suit, filed just to be a nuisance to the blogger who didn't fold under the defamation claims (and yes, to Katz's lawyer, that's an opinion). Update: I've added the filing in the copyright lawsuit below, which adds one other detail: the photograph is not registered for copyright in the US. Katz's lawyers point out that since the photo was originally from Israel it doesn't need to be registered, which is true, but could limit the effectiveness of any lawsuit. Separately, according to Randazza, Katz claims to have had the copyright in the photo assigned to him from the original photographer. None of that changes any of the analysis here about the lawsuits in question.

Of course, all this has really done is activate the Streisand Effect, and get a lot more attention to Katz, to the lawsuits, to the blog and, of course, to the photo itself. You would think that someone with so much money and business success would have thick enough skin to know how to ignore such things. In the meantime, Randazza has pointed out how bizarre it is to go from suing an individual blogger to adding one of the largest companies in the world to the fight on the other side, for no good reason:

My guess is that their strategy is this: If you keep whiffing against a small time blogger, you might as well then just pick a fight with one of the biggest companies in the world. Sit back and get your popcorn and watch how this one works out. I want to thank Mr. Katz for bringing in an 800 lb gorilla to help me in his unsupportable SLAPP suit.

We have yet to speak to Google's lawyers about this case, but we expect that they will be receptive to standing up for the First Amendment along with us.

Sometimes I think there should be mandatory training on the Streisand Effect before one is allowed to become a lawyer.

Filed Under: defamation, first amendment, ranaan katz, slapp, streisand effect
Companies: google, miami heat, nba