[IP] Another Copyright Mess?
Delivered-To: dfarber+@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2004 05:17:29 -0500 (EST)
From: EEkid@xxxxxxx
Subject: Another Copyright Mess?
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
What's in a name? A fortune, some inmates say
Wed Mar 17,11:31 AM
By Emanuella Grinberg, Court TV
NEW YORK
(<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ct/cr_ct/storytext/SIG=10plq4k78/*http://www.courttv.com/>Court
TV) ? It may not bbe a strategy that's tried, tested and true, but that
hasn't stopped inmates across the nation from claiming copyright to their
names and then demanding money from lawyers and judges who dare to utter them.
Â
In a form of legally sanctioned harassment, inmates awaiting trial and
already convicted are passing their time behind bars filing
multimillion-dollar liens against figures involved in their cases for
unauthorized use of their names in legal papers and transcripts.
However ludicrous, such scams can be, at best, a huge hassle for members of
the legal community. Lawyers and judges have no choice but to contest them,
which can be time-consuming and expensive, and often impedes the inmate's
trial.
In the most recent example, a Rikers Island inmate being tried for
crack-cocaine possession, interrupted his preliminary hearing a number of
times to declare that his name was copyrighted and he would be demanding
money from parties in the court who spoke it without his permission.
James Walker filed liens on June 20, 2003, against Queens Assistant
District Attorney Theresa Tebbet-Koubeck and Justice Joseph Grosso,
demanding $500,000 for each reference they made to him while handling his
drug case.
In response, earlier this week, the office of Queens District Attorney
Richard Brown filed civil papers against the secretary of state and the New
York Department of State, which handles lien filings, demanding that
Walker's claims first be shown to have merit.
"The result of these bogus filings is that the reputations and credit
worthiness of the public officials involved is irreparably harmed," the
motion says. "Clearly, these filings were made in an attempt to subvert the
administration of justice by intimidating and harassing public officials to
prevent them from exercising their official duties."
Usually, the lawyers and justices hit with the liens triumph in getting
them tossed, but not without going through a lengthy court process during
which their credit report is frozen.
Such was the case with convicted tax evader Joseph Komes Jr. of Illinois.
In January 2003, he sent a $2 million invoice to McHenry County Judge Ward
Arnold in January 2003, alleging the judge violated a purported copyright
on Komes' name four times during a November 2002 hearing for tax evasion.
To ensure he would collect on Arnold's $500,000-an-instance violation,
Komes placed a lien on Arnold's Union, Ill., home.
In May 2003, a judge from a neighboring county declared Komes' actions
fraudulent and tossed out the lien. He also barred Komes from filing
further liens against Arnold and ordered the McHenry County recorder not to
accept any such documents from Komes without court approval.
One reason inmates have been successful, at least in getting liens levied,
is that filing a lien requires merely a notarized application, not proof of
copyright, according to New York City copyright lawyer Susan Buckley.
Also, there is no system of checks and balances between the Department of
State, responsible for accepting copyright applications, and the county
clerk, who accepts applications for liens. This proves especially fortunate
for inmates trying to claim copyright of their name, Buckley said, since a
name cannot be copyrighted.
"The copyright body of law is designed to protect creative expression and
the way you form your thoughts," Buckley said. "You can't copyright a fact,
and an inmate's name is a fact."
As long as the loopholes exist, inmates continue to slip through them. In
September 2003, Oklahoma inmate Carl Ervin Batts invoiced the federal
prosecutor and two judges who sent him to prison for five years claiming
they owed him $13.5 million for copyright infringement.
In response, the federal government filed suit to bar Batts from filing
more liens against their personal property and to toss out the ones he
already filed. The suit also asks the judge to order the court clerk and
its staff to "use their best efforts to refrain from" accepting any
documents filed from Batts seeking liens against the two judges and prosecutor.
But just weeks after the prosecutor in the case, U.S. Attorney David Dugas,
filed a preliminary injunction in February to stop a convicted mail fraud
scammer from filing liens against him, he received a phone call from
another prosecutor asking for advice in mounting a similar defense against
another inmate.
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"You don't want to prohibit the filings in such a way that would block
those that are legitimate," Dugas said. "It's difficult to filter the
frivolous claims from those that are valid."
Meanwhile, the rapidity with which the scam is spreading is evident in its
proliferation within one detention center.
Adalberto Orrego is one of a handful of inmates in the Metropolitan
Detention Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., who filed liens last summer while
awaiting sentencing for importing heroin.
He demanded millions of dollars from a federal judge, three prosecutors and
the prison warden for infringement of the alleged copyright on his name.
Orrego is also being held in comtempt of court while a civil suit is
pending against him for violating a temporary restraining order the feds
had obtained to stop him from filing liens.
Within the same month, three other Metropolitan Detention Center inmates
pursued similar tactics against figures involved in their cases.
From the same prison, inmate Luis Rual Rodriguez sent his own lawyer,
Edward Jenks, an invoice for $41 million. The convict currently serving
time for a drug rap also sent Assistant U.S. Attorney Noah Perlman a $30
million invoice for using his name 60 times in court papers and prosecutor
Scott Klugman was hit with a $2 million for four mentions.
While Rodriguez never pursued the matter by filing liens to ensure payment
from Jenks, he did file liens against Perlman and Klugman. The Brooklyn
district attorney's office is currently investigating the matter to decide
what action to take.
"It's an ongoing process," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Katz, who is
handling the case. "It didn't come to our attention until recently, and it
has to go through the courts like any other case, which can turn into a
very long process."
In another instance, Metropolitan Detention Center inmates Felipe Johnson
and Jaime Gonzalez targeted their defense lawyer, Harry Batchelder, with a
lien for unauthorized use of their names in their respective trials.
Gonzalez also filed liens against the judge presiding over his trial for
running a drug ring, forcing Federal Judge Allyne Ross to recuse herself
from his sentencing. Another judge gave him life in prison.
Johnson also filed a lien against the presiding judge in his trial for $60
million.
Batchelder confirmed that the liens filed against him were eventually
tossed after months of waiting for a court date to hear his suit. "There is
some movement from the U.S. attorney's office acting against these suits,
but they're just mulling over them now, it will take a long time to devise
a defense against this sort of thing," he said.
Although all of these cases are likely to be unsuccessful, the inmates may
not care. Slowing the process down, and harassing the court officials,
seems to be the point.
"If an inmate can get us to respond to his actions, it's a victory for
him," said U.S. Attorney Dugas, who was wary of additional media attention
to the issue. "We don't want to give any more inmates any bright ideas."
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