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Peter Thiel & Y Combinator Fund a “Litigation Financing” Startup to Make Money Off Other Peoples’ Lawsuits

Legalist is a startup founded by Thiel Fellow Eva Shang and Christian Haigh, backed by Y Combinator: it will use data-mining to identify people who have been legally wronged by deep-pocketed aggressors and offer to finance their litigation in return for a share of the winnings. report this ad This tactic, called “champerty,” used to be illegal, but as it has morphed into the more thrusting, …


JJ Abrams Urges Paramount to Drop Its Lawsuit Over Fan Star Trek Movie

Abrams directed the first two Star Trek reboot movies and is producing the third one for Paramount; he says he convinced the studio to drop its controversial lawsuit against Axanar, a crowdfunded fan-film (a suit that included a dubious claim about the copyrightability of the Klingon language) telling them that the lawsuit “wasn’t an appropriate way to deal with the fans.” Abrams cited director …