A sports psychologist who wrote a motivational book called “Winning Isn’t Normal” tried to collect $25,000 for copyright violation from a non-profit organization in Oakland that sponsored a swim team, after a passage from the book was quoted on the organization’s Twitter page. Not only did Keith Bell lose his lawsuit, but he’s been ordered to pay the defendants $122,000 in attorneys’ fees.
According to the article, Bell was, um, motivated to get money this way on previous occasions.
“The court also noted that this was not the first time Bell had used this tactic, bringing more than 26 other lawsuits and obtaining settlements from at least 90 different alleged infringers, all relating to the WIN Passage. The court said that Bell’s claims all appeared to be designed to extract a quick settlement in exchange for an amount that was just cheap enough to discourage his targets from mounting a fair use defense.”
There are innumerable folks engaging in the legal extortion trick. Whether lawyers or just enterprising business-crooks. You’d have had to have your head in the sand the last 25 years not to know how common this maneuver is. And how insanely lucrative it usually is until / unless you a) get too greedy AND b) bite somebody fully prepared to bite back who’s c) also in a venue with a favorable judicial climate.
