Veoh, like YouTube, pioneered the idea of enabling users to self-post video to the Internet. Then Universal, the entertainment company and owner of many copyrights, began a particularly aggressive campaign of litigation against it. Though Veoh Networks won a judicial decision in its favor, Universal appealed, having also taken the unusual step of suing three Veoh investors personally. In December the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed Veoh’s victory, but in the mean time Veoh had declared bankruptcy. Company founder Dmitry Shapiro recalls:

As you can imagine the lawsuit dramatically impacted our ability to operate the company. The financial drain of millions of dollars going to litigation took away our power to compete, countless hours of executive’s time was spent in dealing with various responsibilities of litigation, and employee morale was deeply impacted with a constant threat of shutdown. Trying to convince new employees to join the company in spite of this was extremely challenging.

By the end, “The company that we had built, that was once valued at over $130 million was gone,” writes Shapiro. Ron Coleman writes:

Under the American Rule, the cost of maintaining a meritorious defense to relentless litigation is prohibitive and what fee-shifting is available favors is applied with sickening asymmetry, virtually always favoring the party to which legal fees mean the least.

According to Eric Goldman, “This case’s real result is that Veoh is legal, but Veoh is dead – killed by rightsowner lawfare that bled it dry.” Mike Masnick points out that Universal is still pursuing its action.

Filed under: copyright, loser pays