What is the definition of a troll in the legal context? Most commonly one hears the term in the context of the phrase &quot;copyright troll,&quot; but what is the essence of a legal &quot;troll&quot;?
Another term sometimes used in place of &quot;copyright troll&quot; or &quot;patent troll&quot; in order to be less pejorative is &quot;non-practising entity&quot;1 (moreso in the patent context). These terms refer to a family of characteristics, not always present in every particular instance. These are not well-defined legal concepts but are used colloquially (mostly in academia and journalism) to describe a kind of behaviour in the legal system. Some legal opinions have used the term &quot;troll&quot;.2 And some statutes even aim to assist defendants subject to claims from trolls.3 Some features: they do not licence or produce the material themself they adopt aggressive, vexatious, and frivolous litigation tactics to attempt to get high value settlements they initiate claims or demands beyond the scope of their rights or despite fair use defences litigation awards and settlements are a significant part of their revenue Because these terms (copyright troll, patent troll, troll, non-practising entity) do not have a precise meaning, good academic work that uses such a term will provide a definition of how they are using the term within their work.4 1. This is also somewhat imprecise, but by non-practising entity, this refers to entities that do not &quot;practise the patent.&quot; This is an odd phrase, but to practise a patent means to actually use, make, or sell the patented invention or products incorporating the patented invention (as opposed to merely excluding others from doing so). 2. I haven't done my own independent research for this and am not providing a list of cases, but see footnote 17 of Brad Greenberg, &quot;Copyright Trolls and Presumptively Fair Uses&quot;, 2014. It lists a few judicial opinions from the United States using the term, often in quotation marks. The opinions relate trollness to &quot;costly and expansive discovery to need to oppose a fair use defence&quot;, that one party was not a troll because it &quot;actually produced the [works] and did not merely acquire the copyright therein to enforce against infringers&quot;, that &quot;copyright trolling&quot; uses litigation &quot;not to make the copyright owner whole but to provide a new revenue stream&quot;. There are likely many more examples. 3. See for example Washington State's Patent Troll Prevention Act. They use the term only in the short title because of its popular connotation. The term does not appear in the text of the statute. Instead, it prohibits what is considered &quot;bad faith&quot; assertions of patent infringement and includes a description in a preamble of what the legislature considers the nuisance to be. 4. Greenberg's operational definition is: &quot;a copyright owner who: (1) acquires a copyright—either through purchase or act of authorship—for the primary purpose of pursuing past, present, or future infringement actions; (2) compensates authors or creates works with an eye to the litigation value of a work, not the commercial value; (3) lacks a good faith licensing program; and (4) uses the prospect of statutory damages and litigation expenses to extract quick settlements of often weak claims.&quot;
Court filings are, in general, matters of public record. This does not automatically put them into the public domain. This will mean that, absent a special order of the court, anyone will be able to read this filing as pert of the court records. Many courts now make all or parts of their records available on the web. But the copyright holders will possibly retain their rights to authorize the making of further copies, and surely retain the right to authorize the making of derivative works, and their other rights that are part of the copyright bundle, such as the rights of public performance. These rights would not be retained if the work had been placed in the public domain.
The fact that something is illegal does not imply that it is illegal to post pictures of it happening. In general, under U.S. law, free speech protects almost all forms of communications subject to a handful of narrow exceptions and this is not one of them. There are many legitimate reasons one might want to post video of a fight (e.g. to identify crime perpetrators for purposes of prosecuting them), but no legitimate purpose is legally necessary. Surely as a platform Reddit cant hide against it being a platform of free speech in this case? They most definitely can. Reddit is also not responsible for user posted content under Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act, even if it were illegal for the person posting it to post the content
I did a lot of digging through case law and statutes, but I don't see a definition for "biological sex" anywhere in federal law, though after looking through those cases, it seems pretty clear that courts think of "biological sex" as a definition of "sex," and that they take it to mean the sex listed on your birth certificate. Even if we could find a straightforward statutory definition, it probably wouldn't do much to inform the interpretation of this memorandum, as it would only apply to the specific section of law in which the definition was included.
LegalZoom did not get it wrong. The case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission was under Colorado law (hence it was against the Colorado Civil Rights Commission), not federal law. LZ stated that 20 states have enacted laws against discrimination based on sexual orientation, and Colorado is one of those states. The issue was heard by SCOTUS because the plaintiff raised claims under the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment, hence he could make a federal case of it. A prior case (Azucar Bakery) cited by LZ was about refusing to make a cake with anti-gay slogans, and was decided by the commission. Here is a brief filed by that plaintiff in that and two related cases, arguing a pattern of religious discrmination. LZ got it mildly wrong in saying "the court ruled that this was not discrimination because...", because the case did not go to court, it ended at the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The second case appears to refer to Charge No. CP2018011310 a complaint filed against Masterpiece, where the same commission found probable cause for an anti-discrimination proceeding. In that proceeding, the Colorado Civil Rights Division finds that complainant Scardina "adequately shows that the Respondent's reason is pretext". This led to a complaint against the commission in US District Court (Civil Action No. 18-cv-02074-WYD-STV). There was a motion to dismiss which had partial success, but which was not about the substance of the case (it had to do with immunity, standing, abstention doctrines). The case was later dismissed, because the parties settled. So at no point did a court rule on the substance of the "pretext" issue – on this point, I think LZ overstated the significance of the commission's decision.
Newspapers often say things that are not technically true by the standards of legal usage, especially in headlines which must be brief. "Legalize" is a popular or political concept, not a legal one. Instead, the legal concept underlying such court actions is that (1) an existing prohibition is unconstitutional, and thus such a law cannot exist, and (2) anything is legal unless it is specifically made illegal. "Legalize" is a reasonable term that describes what happens in such cases: to make something be legal (per (2) that means "remove a restriction").
The audio book would probably be an infringing derivative work because the client could redistribute it once the client received it. It sounds very much like a product that is regularly sold by merchants relying on copyrights. Conceivably, simply reading a book aloud to a client in some sort of streaming context that could't be shared with others or replayed would merely be fair use, much like hiring a baby sitter to read a book aloud to your children would be clearly fair use. If there were an automatic text to sound converter as opposed to an individualized performance, it might not be considered infringing. There are people with programs that do this who haven't been sued, but the boundaries haven't been explored very thoroughly. Honestly, there isn't a lot of guidance in this area from statutory language, and the questions would often not be guided by much case law involving similar facts. Your intuition living in the modern world is probably almost as good as a lawyer's in this situation.
Is this interpretation correct? YES Encounters such as this should normally fall within the non-statutory stop &amp; account which covers police-initiated conversations with members of the public to ask general questions about their activities when there are no reasonable grounds to suspect an offence. The terminology varies from Force to Force, but can be summarised as: What are you doing? Why are you in the area? Where are you going? What are you carrying? There is no legal requirement or obligation to answer any of these questions, and the police cannot lawfully detain anyone to ask them - unlike the statutory powers under Stop &amp; Search and Arrest covered by the OP.