Marshals ordered to seize Righthaven assets
vegasinc.com
vegasinc.com
Hopefully the next step (when it's found that liquidating Righthaven won't satisfy its debts) is to pierce the veil of this shell company and pursue damages directly from the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post for their frivolous proxy lawsuit.
IANAL, but I don't believe that the court found that the asset doesn't exist. I believe they found that the specific details of copyright law render it such that the asset wasn't sufficient for Brighthaven to have legal standing.
That doesn't mean that the asset doesn't exist. It's just that BH was dumb enough to buy something useless. It's kinda like me selling my car keys to someone else. They're completely useless to the buyer (I didn't sell them my car!), but the asset of the key certainly exists. And when the sheriff comes to seize that buyer's assets, the key will be picked up with everything else -- and who knows where it will go after that.
I suppose RH's 'asset' would include the right to appeal the decision of no-standing, but it seems only an even more determined copyright troll would give that a nonzero value. Given that trolls want easy targets that will quickly roll over for a few thousand, I'm guessing this more-determined troll doesn't exist.
If the contract between RH and LVRJ specifies that it is an exclusive right to sue, then the LVRJ just has to appease the holder of that 'asset' (most likely with a portion of the proceeds) in the event of wanting to pursue clear-cut infringement.
Getting a license is different than owning an asset because you don't own anything, but rather someone gives you permission to make use of an asset that they own (or have control over). The only right that the license covered, was the right to sue people infringing on the copyright. The finding in court was that you cannot license just this right and no others. Thus, RH never really obtained this right.
So, in total, RH does in fact have nothing: they never had an asset of any sort, and the right that they attempted to obtain by licensing was determined not obtainable by licensing. The only thing they they attempted to obtain was the legal permission to utilize that asset; having found that permission is non-transferable, they have nothing at all.
The underlying problem is a system that doesn't punish this type of behavior strongly enough. I'd endorse serious jail time (in ghetto "don't drop the soap in the shower" type jails) for these types of offenses in order to disincentivize this harmful parasitic behavior.