Messages

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: A new twist on Higbee

« on: April 08, 2018, 09:10:24 PM »

I haven't posted in a while, so I thought that I'd give an update. First of all, I have to say what an amazing, supportive, and informative forum this is. Many thanks to the folks who run it, and also those who have the guts to post about their ongoing battles.
Several months ago, acting on info from this forum and advice of council, I decided to take the route of freezing the evil Higbee out. I haven't responded to him in any shape or form. I screen calls, so when the caller comes up as "unknown" I don't pick up. That is how Higbee's calls come in, BTW - he operates like any scam artist, hiding his name on incoming calls. On the two messages I've received I delete them as soon as I hear "This is XXX from Higbee and Associates, and I'd..." I don't plan on opening any envelopes, although I've only received the one so far, and I delete emails without reading them. If I get a registered letter, I'm going to refuse to sign for it. The first contact I plan on having with them is when a server approaches me and serves me with papers that they're suing me.
I don't know if that will happen, but as my attorney pointed out, they've done no research. They don't know that I don't have a lot of money, they don't know that I have screen captures of sites showing the alleged copyrighted photo, they don't know that there are STILL a number of sites giving their image away on the web, and in their package they never sent proof of copyright, they just said, "this belongs to our client, so pay us a thousand bucks."
I'm fully prepared to go to court, but in the end I think that it will cost them much more to do that than they can get from me (I don't have much). And as my attorney said, we'll immediately counter-sue so that should we win the day, they will have to pay for everything on my end.
I will keep posting status, but as of now, I'm expecting the next extortion letter with an elevated amount, and the third email that everyone seems to get. I'll read nor reply to either. But I've come to a place where I'm at peace with this - I'm no longer losing sleep or experiencing non-stop worrying, I'm ready to fight.
That's me, jousting windmills!

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: A new twist on Higbee

« on: February 08, 2018, 06:13:34 PM »

Forgot to mention... my attorney also told me that in my state, damages from a lawsuit can't touch my house, my car, and $30,000 in assets - they have to go after anything beyond that. I live an extremely happy and satisfying life, but I fit into the category of starving artist, living kind of gig to gig. Given the above parameters, IF Higbee sued, I don't know what he could possibly get.

Do you think that he does any research about a client before filing a lawsuit against them in a state different from his, where he'd start bleeding money from the time that he hired a process server?

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Jousting Windmills

« on: February 08, 2018, 12:05:37 AM »

Just as Don Quixote jousted windmills, I've decided to do the same thing. I wrote up my threats from Higbee so far, along with my story and proof that I got the image from a "public domain" site, and the explanation of how many Americans are being threatened by him, and sent it to the "60 Minutes" news show tip line.
Tomorrow morning I'm making an appointment with the local District Attorney to see if there's any way that this can be construed as extortion.
Today I contacted the regional television news outlet to see if they are interested in doing a story on this scam.
I also contacted the regional newspaper for the same purpose.
In scouring the internet for stories, I've seen that Higbee has threatened people for using photos that they took themselves, and for properly attributed photos from Wikipedia Commons, among other things. They aren't examining or discriminating in their threats, so they probably include kids with their school projects, scout troops, etc. Makes for one hell of a great news story.
My next stop will be the Postal Service - if he can be seen as running a scam, that's a federal offense that has serious implications.
After that, I'm looking to the State Bar of California. If enough complaints come in, they may want to take a closer look at this character.
What will come of all this? Probably nothing. But it damn sure makes me feel good!

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: A new twist on Higbee

« on: February 05, 2018, 05:16:16 PM »

Today I made an appointment with an attorney for a legal consultation. I brought in all materials, including the screen shots on the "public domain" site and on a Pinterest stock photo page. He read the Higbee letter, examined everything that I’d brought, and told me two things (both of which have been said a number of times on this site already):

1) It is a scam. His opinion was that if Higbee wanted to make money off taking lawsuits into a courtroom, he'd be finding a way to sue drug companies, insurance companies, national million-dollar corporations, etc. He pointed out that Higbee would probably go broke if he was chasing ordinary people with a website for a few thousand bucks a trial. He feels that Higbee is simply casting a wide net, and if only a small percentage of the people bite, he’s still making a fortune without spending a lot of money.

2) (as Robert said in a previous post) Never, ever, ever talk to Higbee and Asso. Not by mail, not by email, not by phone. If he does actually sue, then he said only my attorney should speak to him.

He said that this operation is only a step above the email that you receive from a Nigerian prince who needs help bringing a million dollars into the country. He’s actually had people come into his office who fell for that one, by the way.

Anyway, I’m not an attorney, so don’t take this as iron-clad advice, but it rang true to me. Again, I appreciate everyone on this site. Thanks.

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: A new twist on Higbee

« on: February 04, 2018, 06:00:35 PM »

Thank you SO much to everyone on the forum. Great support and info, and extortionletterinfo.com ROCKS!

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: A new twist on Higbee

« on: February 04, 2018, 11:46:03 AM »

Thanks for the post and the kind words. Greatly appreciated. I don't know about living life like I was before - this thing has been eating me up with worry and stress. I have a screen capture of the free stock photo site that actually says all images are in public domain, including the one I received the letter about. I realize that doesn't mean anything at all, but it does at least give me a clear conscious that I was acting in good faith and didn't just knowingly just steal someone's photo. Still, I feel like the school bully is waiting for me out on the playground to beat me up and there's nothing I can do about it.

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / And more info...

« on: February 03, 2018, 09:18:19 PM »

After consulting a "lawyer acquaintance downtown" (to borrow from "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "The Goodbye Girl"):
1) I need to ask Higbee to produce the copyright registration certificate (I don't think that they can sue without it)
2) I need to ask for documentation show that they are pursuing the hundreds (if not thousands) of other websites using that image. If they aren't aggressively defending it, then the copyright can be considered legally "abandoned."

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / And one more thing...

« on: February 03, 2018, 08:21:01 PM »

In doing a Google image search online, the particular "infringed" image has been used (according to Google) 25,270,000,000 times, and I have yet to find it attributed. It seems that the alleged "copyright holder" isn't defending the copyright very well, if at all... some of them go back a long time. I also found the image listed on at least a couple of public domain image sights. I realize that none of this absolves me from the claim of copyright infringement, but I know that in the case of a trademark if you don't aggressively defend it, you will lose it by default.

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / A little more info

« on: February 03, 2018, 05:37:08 PM »

I should probably mention that the extortion letter showed the alleged infringing photograph and a thumbnail of the page it was on, but there was no mention of the copyright registration information or who owned it, no proof that the photograph was indeed copyrighted, just an opening statement that it the firm was representing PicRights Ltd.

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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / A new twist on Higbee

« on: February 03, 2018, 03:18:24 PM »

The first part of my story is much like the others in the Higbee forum: a letter showed up claiming infringement, demanding money, had the offending photo, etc. I have a website whose theme is drumming, and I occasionally include other interesting things. About a year ago I had a paramedic tell me about a simple home remedy for a poisonous plant, and I shared that with web visitors. I found what I thought was a public domain photo of a poisonous plant online, and included it as an illustration.

The letter sounded like a scam to me, so I tossed it. As a composing musician, copyright is important to me, so I immediately deleted the photo from my server just as a courtesy. It had nothing to do with the theme of the website, and was basically unnecessary and unimportant. It was very small, 200 x 150, but the image was stored on my server at the time.

And now for the twist. The other interesting thing was that none of the letters were addressed to me - they were addressed to the nickname of my studio, "xxxx".

Multiple letters continued to arrive, I tossed them without reading, continuing to assume it was a scam. If it were a serious legal issue, I assumed that they would have been sent by registered mail so that it could be proven in a court of law that they had been received by the correct person.

Next I got a letter from Higbee & Asso saying that they were representing the copyright holder and that if they don't receive $1000 from me in two weeks, they were going to sue. Lots of scary language. Really scary language - but you're already familiar with that from this forum.

Points:

1) In looking up copyright law, I found a site saying that the first order of business in a copyright case is for the plaintiff to issue a cease and desist order. That never happened. Their first contact was with a letter that was sent presorted first class demanding money, which I merely scanned. I don't know if the cease & desist info is correct, but one didn't come.

2) They have never sent a letter to me by my name or any legal entity (a person, a company, etc). For example, if the name of my website was "xxxx," which was the nickname of my studio, then every letter has come to "xxxx" which is not a legal entity - there's no person, corporation, company, LLC, DBA, etc under that name. At least, connected to me; there are probably legal "xxxx" names being used in the country. The Higbee letter begins, "Dear xxxx." No entity under that name has a bank account or is officially registered anywhere - it's simply a nickname that everyone uses casually, not legally.

3) In addition to all this, I believe that I can claim fair use for a few reasons: a) the photo was used to educate - to pass on information about a home remedy for people who had been exposed to this plant; b) no money was made - it is a free site, it costs nothing to view, and in reading the text with the photo, the visitor learned a first aid tip... it was therefore purely educational; c) the use of the photo had nothing at all to do with the overall theme of the website, which is drumming.

I don't know what to do. I don't want to go to court, but based on what I've said, the twist to this is that they'd be suing a non-legal entity. No legal person or entity has even been notified of the supposed copyright infringement.

Any thoughts on this would be greatly and sincerely appreciated - thanks.