• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, March 8, 2017

Media companies including ABC, Yahoo and NBC recently prevailed in a copyright lawsuit brought by Kali Kanongataa, a father who accidentally livestreamed the birth of his son on Facebook and then unsuccessfully sued the companies for displaying a brief portion of the video. Now, the companies are asking to recover at least $140,000 in attorneys' fees and court costs from Kanongataa and his lawyer.

"This litigation was an ill-advised abuse of the Copyright Act and judicial system," ABC, Yahoo and others say in papers filed last week with U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan in New York. They add that Kanongataa and his lawyer "tried to cash in on claims that were clearly barred by the fair use doctrine."

Kanongataa filed copyright infringement lawsuits against ABC, Yahoo, NBC, COED Media and other media outlets last September, several months after he livestreamed his son's birth through Facebook Live. ABC's "Good Morning America" ran an item about the stream and showed a brief, 22-second excerpt of the 45-minute video. A snippet of the video also appeared on Yahoo (which has a partnership with ABC), NBC and other companies.

Kanongataa said later that he thought his family in the Polynesian island Tonga would be able to view his son's birth, but didn't expect it to be seen by the public at large. He argued that the media outlets didn't have the right to broadcast portions of his video.

The media companies asked Kaplan to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that they had a fair use right to incorporate a portion of the live stream into an item about the growth of streaming video. Kaplan threw out the cases against ABC, Yahoo, NBC and COED Media last month.

Last week, those companies filed a motion to recover their legal bills from Kanongataa under the Copyright Act's "fee-shifting" provisions, which enable the winning party in a copyright dispute to seek reimbursement for attorneys' fees.

The companies say fees and costs totaled around $60,000 for ABC and Yahoo, $50,000 for NBC and $31,000 for COED.

ABC and NBC said in their papers that they offered Kanongataa settlements, which he rejected. "Throughout the litigation, defendants’ counsel explained to plaintiff’s counsel that defendants’ uses of the video fit squarely within the fair use doctrine and that plaintiff’s claims were very weak," they say in their legal papers. "Nonetheless, NBC and ABC each tried to reach a nuisance settlement with plaintiff before moving to dismiss the complaints against them. Their efforts did not succeed because plaintiff stubbornly adhered to inflated settlement demands."

In a rare move, the media companies also argue in their motion that Kanongataa's lawyer should be liable for any judgment -- in part because he allegedly "pursued claims that clearly lacked merit."

"Defendants recognize that plaintiff may not have sufficient personal resources to pay in full a judgment for fees," the companies write. "However, defendants believe the record is clear that these cases were meritless from the outset, and then were pursued in bad faith. As a result, defendants request that plaintiff’s counsel be held liable for the payment of defendants’ attorneys’ fees and costs."

The Liebowitz Law Firm in Valley Stream, New York -- which represented Kanongataa, according to court papers -- didn't respond to messages seeking comment.