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A Texas sports psychologist that one court has labeled a “serial litigant” is now suing an Iowa school district for alleged copyright infringement.
Dr. Keith Bell of Austin, who claims to be a “world renowned sports psychologist” and “the father of swimming psychology,” is suing the Solon Community School District in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa.
In his lawsuit, Bell argues that as the author of the copyrighted book, “Winning Isn’t Normal,” he was “the first person to string words ‘winning isn’t normal’ together” and the “first person to put the phrase in writing.” The phrase, he says, expresses his philosophy for outperforming the competition in the world of sports.
The Solon district, he alleges, violated his copyright when a district coach retweeted someone else’s tweet quoting from his book.
Federal court records indicate that since November 2017, Bell has sued at least 35 school districts, colleges, businesses or individuals for copyright violations or trademark infringement.
One law firm has labeled Bell “a copyright troll,” and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has called him “a serial litigant who makes exorbitant demands for damages in hopes of extracting disproportionate settlements.”
In that case, a district court judge had ordered Bell to pay the defendants’ legal fees as a deterrent not only to Bell but “other copyright holders who might consider a similar business model of litigation.”
All of the lawsuits filed by Bell center on his book, which he calls one of “the most widely read literary works in the world,” and a seven-paragraph, copyrighted passage within that book, also entitled “Winning Isn’t Normal.”
The lawsuit against the Solon district alleges that in May 2018, Bell and the district entered into a settlement agreement to resolve the dispute related to the coach’s tweet. That agreement allegedly included a non-disparagement clause and a promise by the district to halt any further use of the copyrighted work.
Bell now claims the district violated those elements of the settlement agreement, in part by failing to remove the tweet that referenced his work, and by a November 2021 phone call in which Superintendent Davis Eidahl allegedly made defamatory statements with racial undertones.
Included in the lawsuit are Bell’s notes of a November 2021 phone call between himself and Eidahl in which Bell claims Eidahl called him the “worst person in the world” and accused him of being a “lonely old man that has no friends, no family and spends all his days searching the internet to find innocent people to steal from.” Bell also alleges that Eidahl asked “me if I was Muslim in a way that was a slur.”
The court records include a copy of an alleged email exchange between Bell and Eidahl shortly after the phone call in which the superintendent wrote: “It’s sad that you spend all your retired time devoted to preying on well-intentioned public school educators devoted to kids. It’s unfortunate that you target public school educators and public school districts to make your living in a time when public school funding is so limited. How much money is enough for you? These educators that you prey on for your own greed are hard-working, good-intentioned individuals that devote their life to kids. I was upset during our call because you continue to target individuals that have sacrificed so much for kids. Now that I’ve given it more thought, I actually feel sorry for you. I can’t imagine the character it takes to devote (your) retirement to these actions. It’s sad.”
Eidahl declined to comment on the lawsuit, noting that the district had yet to see the Bell’s petition, but said he was surprised to hear it had been filed.
“When this first occurred – of course, innocently, I believe – a football coach retweeted something that someone else had tweeted quoting something from his books,” Eidahl said Wednesday. “So, we contacted our attorney at the time and I believe a settlement was reached not only for our district but several other Iowa districts where a coach, maybe, had also followed or retweeted that same tweet.”
Bell declined to comment on the lawsuit or his history of litigation when contacted Wednesday by the Iowa Capital Dispatch.