[Clipart] George Riddick Getting Thumped

[Greg Bulmash]

For those of you who are aware of George Riddick and his business
model of demanding payment for alleged clipart copyright infringement,
he filed 9 or 10 lawsuits last year. Sadly for him, he took on one
defendant that had the money to put on a proactive defense and has
sued him back, suing for a declaration by a Chicago court that they
are not violating his copyrights, in part on the grounds that some of
his copyrights are invalid. They also filed a motion for a restraining
order because they allege he was contacting their clients and
harrassing them.

He has been trying to represent himself pro se (basically acting as
his own lawyer). It's rather entertaining to read the complaint and
the transcript of a recent hearing where he tried to justify his
defense methods to the presiding magistrate.

MR. RIDDICK: I said I don't really appreciate that, because I do know
what I'm talking about, having worked on this for 25 years. However, I
know --

THE COURT: You know, I'm glad you've been at this 25 years. I guess I
had a misspent youth, because I've been 30 years at the bench here
just last month; and I appreciate your education, but I've got to tell
you, it doesn't seem to work the way you seem to think it does. So,
you'd better have something professional in the way of a response.

Go to...

http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/imageline.htm

They have a list of links to some of the early court documents and the
site owner plans to add more links soon (he's on vacation at the
moment). I didn't spot a link to the full transcript of the recent
hearing, but I've seen some more quotes from it and the judge seems
rather annoyed with Riddick.

The forum discussion I got the quote from is here...

http://www.extortionletterinfo.com/forum/read.php?3,1087

Enjoy,

Greg