I thank FightCopyrightTrolls.com for feeding ELI an email they felt would be interesting to us. They were correct.
Read this attorney recruiting email from Randy Taylor and Dan B. Levine of Copyright Defense League.
From: Randy Taylor [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2012 11:05 PM
To: XXXXXXXXX
Subject: Copyright Defense League
Dear Members of XXXXXXX:
I indirectly represent many rights holders who each want to enforce their registered copyright against multiple infringements on the Internet of their photographic works. These professional photographers and their agents are seeking attorneys who are experts at copyright and who can handle dozens, if not hundreds, of infringement cases, each of which has been fully vetted for its merits and viability.
As way of background, the firm that I'm associated with helps these rights holders by locating the online infringements, documenting the evidence and fully vetting the viability of both the infringer and the infringement of their photographs, which are all registered with the US Copyright Office. In fact, the vast majority of infringements that we find are eliminated from consideration because they don't make it through our checklist of 100+ criteria. As an example of this vetting, we only want copyright infringement cases where:
1) The infringer is viable, meaning it is a business or person for whom we have a valid address in the USA, and that is running a commercial website that is earning money. (We do not go after the perverbial 14 year old blogger, and we're deferring to later our pursuit of foreign entities that have jurisdictional challenges).
2) The infringer has no viable defenses, such as fair use or DMCA safe harbor defenses, etc.
In short, we believe that after running all the infringements we find for our clients through our very sophisticated and refined process, we eliminate well over 90% of all the possible infringements cases that we find. Those that remain after our careful vetting we consider to be virtually ""bullet-proof"" cases that are ready for filing.
We now are looking for law firms that have experience with copyright infringement, and that are ready, willing and able to take on lots of these cases on a 33% contingency fee basis. Appropriate firms should desire to receive a virtually unlimited supply of such cases and would be responsible to immediately file such complaints and then negotiate settlements in most instances.
In an effort to save both you and us a great deal of time, I have attached the following item to this email:
1) A typical example of a case file that we would normally send to you for each case. (Please note this attached file is simply an example of a real case, to give you an example of exactly what you would receive from us, so you can begin to assess the amount of work/time that will be required on your side to file a complaint for such a case. I note that it is not a particularly large case since it is only a single infringement. Many of our cases have multiple infringements. And many are against companies of significant size.)
We have an example of a standard retainer agreement that you can also review upon confirming your level of interest. In any agreement that results, your firm would not only need to be responsible for the time/cost of preparing the complaint and negotiating a settlement, but you would also be responsible for laying out the $350 filing fees and any other out-of-pocket expenses involved including, but not limited to, photocopying and any costs associated with serving the infringer. However, any out-of-pocket expenses incurred would be reimbursed to you first from any proceeds for the case. Expense reimbursement would come off the top.
Please feel free to call me at (516) 770-3700, or email me at [email protected], if you have any questions and if your firm is capable and interested in pursuing these cases on our client's behalf. Please indicate how many of these cases you would be willing and able to pursue on a monthly basis. Given the rampant copyright infringement on the Internet today, a virtually endless supply of such cases is available. That said, I would suggest that initially you would start with ten (10) such cases, which would enable you to begin work immediately in a way that we all can independently assess whether to pursue more together later.
We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience. Thank you, in advance, for taking the time to consider this unique opportunity.
Cordially yours,
Dan B. Levine
Copyright 2012 Dan B. Levine.
Some brief comments & observations.
1. Dan doesn't know how to spell "proverbial."
2. Why is Dan "copyrighting" this attorney recruiting email? Who would even want to take credit for what he wrote? LOL.
3. I love how Dan talks about "bullet-proof" cases. Really? Let the ELI Community take a stab at "defending" these bullet-proof cases.
4. Dan wants firms to take on "lots of these cases". Not exactly a wordsmith is he?
5. What a generous 33% split he is offering. I guess this will incentivize the extortionists to mark up the alleged infringed photos in question and also reaffirm the commission range I have frequently reported.
Robert informed me he has more research as follow-up to this announcement post.
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