On November 19, the Las Vegas Review-Journal conceded to a court in a pending case that using a short excerpt of a news article online did not constitute copyright infringement. The LVRJ has been represented with much notoriety in recent years by Righthaven, LLC, a company pursuing copyright claims on behalf of the newspaper, which has filed hundreds of copyright infringement lawsuits against web sites that host content from its clients’ news articles.

Many Righthaven targets have argued in court that their use of LVRJ content is defensible as fair use of that content. For example, current litigation pending against the online Democratic Underground involved the reproduction of five sentences of an article originally published by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The Democratic Underground filed a counterclaim, requesting the court rule the use of the excerpted material did not constitute copyright infringement, but was fair use of the copyrighted material. The Copyright Act grants an exception to the use of copyright material if the copying and use is "fair use." In order to fall under the fair use exception to copyright infringement, the court considers a four-factor balancing test. Examples of work that qualify as fair use of copyrighted material include criticism, news reporting, or commentary, among various other uses.

In addition to the LVRJ’s recent admission, Righthaven recently has encountered other obstacles in pursuing its claims in various courts that have ruled it does not have legal standing to sue on behalf of its clients. All of these rulings likely will affect many of the lawsuits currently pending, and many may be dismissed as a result.