IMAX’s absurd attempt to censor Ars • Hacker News Board

Post by derekp7 » Sat, Jun 20, 2015, 4:32 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #150

derekp7 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering, if a legal trick can be used to limit these C&D letters that have no merit. Effectively, the lawyer on the other side of the letter is making a legal claim, that the law says what you are doing is wrong. If that claim is clearly baseless, then shouldn't the their lawyer be held on malpractice charges? After all, they are licensed and certified experts, and have a duty to not mislead the public.

This strategy works as long as the other party doesn't call your bluff. Which is a very large number of instances compared to the number of instances where the other party decides to tell you to sue or get lost. It's kind of amusing if you call a legal bluff, the other party now has two bad choices: either they will have to go away quietly and the issue will remain or they have to actually sue and will most likely lo…

That's where it would be nice to be able to counter sue for legal expenses, under the theory that the C&D lawyer is abusing his position as an officer of the court in writing a baseless C&D letter (thereby causing the target to have to hire a lawyer to review the issue). So even if this wouldn't happen that often, it would be something they would have to consider prior to writing a letter with baseless claims.

Of course, being lawyers, they would probably put in some fine print that states that no legal threat is implied, or something like that.