It has been a while since I have announced a new player in the extortion letter arena. I have seen a number of smaller one-off claims but rarely a recurrence of newer players. Generally, it is the same players I see such as "Masterfail", Getty Images, LCS, BWP Media, Sanders, etc.
A couple months ago, someone commented to me during an ELI Support Call they did not see much written about Higbee & Associates run by lawyer Mathew Higbee (whose first name is the same as mine but is strangely and intentionally misspelled with one "t").
Over a year ago, I thought Higbee & Associates were going to be another extortion letter entity that would come and go. However, they have entered my radar much more frequently now. In fact, I have checked into their operation and Higbee has gotten quite serious about the business.
Higbee & Associates appear to be overrun with estrogen-based lawyers:
http://www.higbeeassociates.com/about/attorneys/. For Higbee, there seem to be a lot of female "associate attorneys" in subservient positions to "big dog" Mathew.
In any case, there are many clues I have gleaned. First, Higbee refers to themselves as a "national law firm" despite the fact they are based in Santa Ana, California. There is a Google map with many digital thumbtacks throughout the U.S. but nothing else I could find that backs up those Google thumbtacks being shown.
Second, there is an internship program:
http://www.higbeeassociates.com/interns/. It would not surprise me that they place one of these wannabe-lawyers in the clerical end of the copyright extortion business as Getty, Masterfile, LCS, and other larger operations do.
Third, Higbee is investing in a lot of technology in their servicing:
https://client.higbeeassociates.com/login. My guess is that their clients can monitor the status of their cases which would include any copyright money collection efforts.
Fourth, there is a hidden, unpublicized Infringements link just for their targets to use: http://www.higbeeassociates.com/infringementsThis is what is very significant. Through a victim's link that was submitted to me for review, I've had the opportunity to look over the Highbee copyright collection system from a target's perspective. Higbee's system is professional and sophisticated. It reminds me a lot of the system LCS and Getty Images uses. It is possible Higbee has licensed the system Getty & LCS uses. This is NOT a casual, cheap web application being used for onesies or twosies. It is a serious, full-blown technology-based copyright money collection operation.
Although I get a somewhat steady stream of news and information nuggets over the course of time, it was only about a month ago that I was able to make the connection that Higbee & Associates is a new, serious player in relation to the other operations we report on.
As of right now, I cannot identify any copyright lawsuit that Higbee has filed against anyone on behalf of their clients. It doesn't mean they haven't, it just means no one has reported it to me yet. As far as I can tell, the client's Higbee represents are not overly litigious yet. But as Higbee expands and matures, we might see more of that. It all depends on how much of a stomach and public exposure any of Higbee's clients want by filing on smaller parties.
Higbee & Associates is too new for me to determine how litigious they will be. I think they will be selective if they do pursue it because it makes little financial sense in many situations because many would be uncollectible as Masterfile likely learned several years ago.
Because the statute of limitations for copyright infringement matters is 3-years and most of the cases I have seen are within the last year, we may not know until 2017 & 2018 when many of their cases reaches the end of statute of limitations.
The ELI team will definitely be keeping a watchful eye on Mathew Higbee's Higbee & Associates operation in the months to come. If you are a Higbee target, the ELI Forums is the best place for updates and news.
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. And don't worry, I'm confident that sooner or later a lot of the patterns of behavior uncovered by these forums will have consequences, as they should. In fact, you know they already had some real consequences in changing some of Getty's behavior, in raising awareness in online press, and in helping people affected.