HardOCP Sues Infinium Over Legal Threats

Cebu writes "According to GameSpot, in a less than surprising move, Kyle Bennett of tech website HardOCP has decided to file a lawsuit against Infinium Labs, makers of the forthcoming Phantom PC-based 'console'. On February 27, a lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division under the Declaratory Judgment Act to force the issue of Infinium Labs' repeated legal threats against HardOCP for an allegedly defamatory article written last year."

Penny-Arcade

[Digitus1337]

Penny-Arcade attacked them over this (infinitum); the strip can be seen here [penny-arcade.com]. The CEO also states this [penny-arcade.com] to which Penny-Arcade responded with "So Tim thinks we did that comic strip to get more traffic driven to our site. That's a nice thought Tim but you're way off. You see unlike Infinium Labs and your doomed console, Penny Arcade is successful. How can I say this without sounding like an asshole? Penny Arcade has more readers in a given second than your site will ever have even if it were to sit and rot on the internet until time ends and the universe implodes. Hmmm, I guess I can't. Tim also says we called him to let him know it's all in fun. This again is bullshit. I don't care if he likes the comic or not. I've certainly never called the guy and I have no intention of doing so. Bottom line, the guy is a lying huckster. I guess he figured he could post that on his forum and we'd never see it. This proves he has no concept of how huge PA is. Penny Arcade isn't just a comic and a news post Tim, PA is a community and we have agents everywhere. Chances are they're watching you even now." These guys love to get into this kind of stuff.

Headline isn't really accurate.

[mcc]

The way it looked to me they weren't suing them, just asking for a declaratory judgement. I guess it's a kind of lawsuit, but it looked more like HardOCP just telling a judge "These people keep threatening to sue us and it's creating uncertainty. Could you just just decide, let's pretend they'd sued us over the stuff they're threatening to sue over, hypothetically then who would win?". I don't know. i don't really understand it.

Does TX have an anti-SLAPP law?

[phr2]

California does, so if this suit had happened there, HardOCP would be in a position to collect money damages, from what I understand. (SLAPP = Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, when someone exercises First Amendment rights and you sue them to intimidate them into shutting up).

California Anti-SLAPP Project [casp.net]

Re:Here's my view on all this:

[Anonymous Coward]

HardOCp decided to escalate by countersueing [sic]

No, what HardOCP did is file a declaratory lawsuit. This is a lawsuit that forces a court to decide a set of facts once and for all. In this case, the facts under dispute are those in HardOCP's article.

This is NOT an escalation, it's a resolution.

Btw, I am a law student.

Re:Here's my view on all this:

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll respond for him. He answered this question in the aforementioned thread from yesterday. [slashdot.org]

Re:Headline isn't really accurate.

[Aerion]

The Declaratory Judgment Act [findlaw.com], under which HardOCP is "suing," allows "any court of the United States, upon the filing of an appropriate pleading, may declare the rights and other legal relations of any interested party seeking such declaration, whether or not further relief is or could be sought."

Also, "Any such declaration shall have the force and effect of a final judgment or decree and shall be reviewable as such." So even if this isn't technically a "lawsuit," its result will have the same effect as the result of a hypothetical suit against HardOCP.

(You don't really need to be told that IANAL, do you?)

Re:Here's my view on all this:

[aliens]

I didn't know that advocating a non-litigous solution

That is not what you are suggesting. You are suggesting that HardOCP give in to the litigation threatened by Infinium.

A non-litiguous solution would have been, Infinium's CEO (Roberts) sends a letter to HardOCP(Kyle) saying, "You hurt my feelings with your article please take it down" and Kyle could have said yes or no, that is a non-litigious solution.

If you read the article and Infinium's response, the article did not contain false information, merely information that isn't very flattering for Infinium's CEO.

What HardOCP are doing is simply bringing this to a head weeks or months before it gets bounced back and forth between the two companies.

It's like a bandaid, rip it off quickly rather than picking at it.

Re:Here's my view on all this:

[djrogers]

Uhh, the link says that they will be 'setting up shop in' an 8000 sq ft section of a hall, not that the whole 8000 sq ft will be theirs! An 80x100ft booth at ANY trade show would be outrageous for all but the largest of companies... Shoot, does Infinium even have anough employees to man a booth that size?

Re:Suggestion:

[Liselle]

Hmm... do you mean something like this [slashdot.org]? There is already a "The Courts" topic, is that not specific enough?

Re:Lawyer Central?

[00420]

HardOCP admitted that there were a few mistakes in their first article.

ROTFL

Did you even read the page you linked to? If not, here's a sample:

8. In reference to BIG, we will gladly remove the statement, "According to this article, they lived the high life on investors' money and then left investors hanging for more than $15 million dollars:" that is being brought to our attention.

The sentence has been changed to quote more accurately, "According to this article, "Broadband executives lived the high life, sponsoring race cars in the Indy 500 and other races, hosting Hollywood parties, buying an interest in an airplane and making thousands of dollars worth of improvements to a $35 million headquarters. But last November (2000), the tech venture went bust. By then it had burned through more than $15 million of investors' money, including some from several St. Louis Cardinals owners. Roberts could not be reached for comment."

Where did IL's fourms go?

[IgD]

Shortly after this fiasco began, IL took their forums offline. One guy wrote he was a millionaire investor and wanted to tour IL so he could vouch for their credibility. Others questioned the lawsuit and asked specifically what was wrong with the HardOCP article. I don't think anyone ever got a meaningful reply. The former forums can be found at http://forum.phantom.net. All that is there now is a message that reads "We will be re-launching the forums soon. Down for maintainance, we are upgrading to new software and adding more features. Admin."

Re:Suggestion:

[Ralph Wiggam]

Interesting offtopic anecdote:

Soon after John Ashcroft took office, he had both Lady Justice and her male counterpart (who wears a loin cloth) in the Justice Department lobby covered in blue curtains. Both have been on display for 80 years. He was apparently terrified that his picture would be on the front page with an aluminium tit over his shoulder. The symbolism of shrouding Lady Justice is obviously lost on him.

-B

Re:USPTO sucks at trademarks too it seems...

[rei_slashdot]

Interplay has had "By Gamers for gamers" for YEARS. I say Interplay sues Infinium.

Re:Here's my view on all this:

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

Attempting to intimidate someone into sumbission through fraudulent legal threats is EXTORTION.

No... attempting to intimidate someone with legal threats you have no intention to follow through with is called BARRATRY [reference.com].