Copyright Troll Sues Over Wrong Movie

Stupidity

from the slow-down-sparky dept

Copyright troll lawyers aren’t exactly known for being the most thorough and careful in what they do. You may remember, for example, that when Uwe Boll jumped into the copyright trolling game, his lawyers sued over films that hadn’t had their copyright registered at the time that many were accused of downloading them. That’s a no-no. And, of course, there are plenty of examples, from Evan Stone to (of course) Prenda, of the lawyers apparently focusing on quantity rather than quality in their efforts.

Torrentfreak has the story of one copyright trolling operation that was apparently in such a rush to cash in that it sued over the wrong movie. Yes, you read that right. The screwup appears to have been originally noted by Die Troll Die, which pointed out that some documents in the case refer to Night of the Living Dead: Resurrection while others refer to Night of the Living Dead 3D: Re-Animation. These are different movies by different people. But the lawsuits claim to be about the first, even though they’re representing the producers of the second. Oooops.

And that has made the guy who made the first one not at all happy. As he told TorrentFreak:

“I’d like to respond by saying that the real story here is that the court documents have named the WRONG movie involved in this case. Dimentional Dead Productions LLC are actually the makers of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 3D: RE-ANIMATION, and not NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD RESURRECTION which was produced by my production company North Bank Entertainment,” Jones told TorrentFreak.

[….] “I have actually been personally contacted by one of the downloaders accused in this case to inform me that the court documents have mistakenly named my film as the subject of this case,” Jones explains.

“I was sympathetic to his plight and think this whole practice of suing individuals is nonsense and I would personally not be interested in pursuing any case of this nature. I support people’s rights and freedoms and do not want my film to be mistakenly associated with Dimentional Dead Productions LLC or their nonsense lawsuit,” he adds.

As Jones also points out, this most likely provides a very good defense to anyone sued or threatened. This also, certainly, raises some questions about the lawyering of Van R. Irion, who filed the case. Suing over the wrong title? Yikes.

That said, the real irony here may be that the whole reason so many “Night of the Living Dead” offshoots exist is that the original is in the public domain. To have someone go copyright trolling on a product that only exists because it was built off of the public domain — and then to go after the wrong derivative work… well, once again, we’re left looking at yet another example of copyright working exactly as not intended. There has been a ton of creativity around the original movie because of its public domain status. It seems rather insulting to then use some of those offshoots (correctly or incorrectly) for trolling.

Filed Under: night of the living dead, troll