Attorney Larry Zerner & Vincent Tylor Extortion Letter

[Mulligan]

Thanks for the reply Robert. I thought it was pretty insane myself. This portion of my website was created by a student. Goes to show you no good deed goes unpunished. I'm not so much pissed as much as it is a hassle. Should he try and take it to trial any thoughts?

Workcrew, if he were stupid enough to file, and if I were you, I would immediately file for a declaratory judgment, using the wealth of information found on ELI, as well as the tactics found on a fabulous site, where non-lawyers have successfully defeated huge corporations by filing a motion for declaratory judgment:

http://www.tabberone.com/Trademarks/trademarks.shtml

Tabberone.com is one of my favorite resource sites, and I really admire the people who run it because they refuse to sign confidentiality agreements when they make the large corporations cave in. To quote from their "about" box:

We are not lawyers but we have represented ourselves in federal court against multi-billion dollar companies and won 80% of them. The content here is not presented as legal advice but as opinion and a result of what we have learned in these battles and from extensive research.

Of particular interest to me was the description of how they out-Disneyed the lawyers at Disney Enterprises. Read all about it at...

http://www.tabberone.com/Trademarks/DisneyLawsuit/DisneyLawsuit.shtml

These folks are heroes in my book, and anyone interested in copyright or trademark law should take the time to read every word on their site.

Well into my second year of playing the payment extraction game with Getty and McCormack, my personal opinion now is that (if one has the time, energy, and interest in doing it) going after trolls and defeating them in court (signing NO confidentiality agreement after winning a declaratory judgment and making all of the paperwork public when it's over) makes the most sense and would pay off bigger in both the short and long terms.

[Robert Krausankas (BuddhaPi)]

We should invite the owners of tabberone to visit ELI!! Gotta love their Hall of Shame, among other things including the creative use of the English language!

I think I love these people...some of my favorite snippets..

Aanraku Stained Glass, and its idiot owner....
...for setting new lows in intelligence. They actually are stupid. Very stupid.
...and their kiss-ass lawfirm, Sutherland (www.sutherland.com)
 ...a Nevada-based company run by some idiots who have no real understanding of copyright law
...their clueless representative for Springs who make Blue Jean Teddy fabrics, Brad Bailey, who went on a directionless rampage concerning their fabric with no knowledge of the law. Stupid, stupid, stupid is Brad Bailey as is Art Impressions Licensing.
...Krispy Kreme where the hole in the donut is smaller than the hole in the collective heads at KK.
...Laurel Burch Artwork, and it's idiot president
...Love Potion Perfume, and the ditzy owner
...Bubble Charms and its tight-assed owner, Diane Stewart,

Perhaps I need to not be so nice and polite to our own ELI trolls...

Mulligan you just made my day, maybe even my entire weekend!

Heres the who and why these 2 fine folks got involved if anyone is interested.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudnikov_v._Chalk_%26_Vermilion

[Mulligan]

Robert, like you, the good folks at Tabberone.com know how to describe copyright and trademark Nazis, as well as illiterate lawyers and collection agents like Seattle's self-proclaimed intellectual property maven Timothy B. McCormack, a man who can't even proofread and correct the many errors in the form letters he and his apparently semi-literate paralegal Ashanti A. Taylor apparently send out by the hundreds.

I'm glad you liked the site. It's a treasure trove for those who want to beat the trolls at their own game.

[Matthew Chan]

I think Tabberone.com is going to be a friend of ELI before too long. I like what they are doing.

I really like how they are using the terms "copyright extortionists" and "trademark extortionists". They also believe in getting smart and getting a spine. They think like we do.

http://www.tabberone.com/Trademarks/CeaseAndDesist/ceaseanddesist.shtml

Of course, the new term I coined during my visit with Robert is "copyright thugs". It appears others have used the term in reference to Perez Hilton. LOL.

Anyone want to take a stab of what a "copyright thug" might look like?  Maybe this character is dressed in black armed with a baseball bat ready to break someone's knees?

[Jerry Witt (mcfilms)]

That IS an interesting site! The law firm they give a black eye to, Greenberg Traurig, jumped out at me. They were the law firm of Syntax-Brillian corporation, a US-based TV maker that supposedly went bankrupt. In actuality they transferred their assets and IP to a Chinese company and ripped off all shareholders. Greenberg Traurig is also famous for being associated with Jack Abramoff.

I love that http://www.tabberone.com is helping to educate people about rip-off artists everywhere and on how people can stand up for themselves.

[Moe Hacken]

Great find, Robert, and great follow up discussion by the rest of ELI.

The pink sailboat was one of the images involved in the HAN vs. Aloha lawsuit. It does appear Mr. Carner has chosen a more civilized strategy of kindly requesting a reasonable amount along with a polite cease-and-desist request. Perhaps that will do well for him if he gets a higher percentage of "compliance", enough to cover the PicScout bill and a small office in Honolulu (not cheap).

As for VKT, this latest shameful and shameless attempt smacks of sore-loser attitude. As Robert says, the guy still appears to think his 12-year-old tourist shots that you can get on any microstock for five bucks are worth 5 GRAND. The lawyer only needed to write the letter to prove he's an asshat, but as Matt reveals he takes it one step further and confirms it repeatedly in his own website.

I'd like to point out that VKT has not been inactive through the HAN vs. Aloha process. He has actually entered more registrations into the copyright office database, and it appears he's taken Oscar's advice as to the proper manner of registering a work.

I was curious about the choice of the image and I looked it up on Google images. I think he's targeting some potential infringements and cherry-picking the image that gives him the best possibility of covering his legal bases.

I actually think VKT has learned a lot from the Federal case and from reading ELI. Unfortunately, he's using the knowledge to enhance his abusive profit model instead of learning the moral and ethical lesson therein.

As Matt said, in the aftermath of what happened in HAN vs. Aloha, only a fool would roll over and pay more than fair market price ($5) for this very same image that they failed to "protect" with their abusive lawsuit.

This attempt isn't even a nice try. Tylor and Zerner should hang their heads in shame, but they appear to be immune to remorse.