There is some weirdness that makes the perjury clause ineffective in most cases (something like the perjury only applying to some generally-true part of the claim).
I beleive the perjury clause applies to whether you represent who you claim to represent (eg. not saying you are a lawyer for SomeCorp when you are not). As pkinsky said, I think you only have to meet a "good faith standard" that you think the thing you are filing against is actually infringing.
The problem is that the only thing the claimant is saying under penalty of perjury as that they are actually the rightsholder (or are authorized to act on their behalf), and they have a good-faith belief that their takedown reasoning is correct. Since it's essentially impossible to prove lack of a "belief", no one ever gets in trouble for filing a false or weak claim.
Lawyers tell me that judges rarely prosecute lying under oath, they just rule against the liars.
The reason? If a person is accused of lying under oath, what's to stop him from lying more during the perjury trial? He's already accused of that crime, so more lies makes little difference. This is why perjury trials are so rare.
Also, "perjury", strictly defined, means testimony that's both material to the issues and leads to a miscarriage of justice. That's a tough standard.
It's so if they have a good reason to investigate you enough, and any of these is false, they can charge you with perjury even if they can't get anything else to stick.
Perjury cases are very, very rarely prosecuted even in cases where the violation is blatant (from my experience).
Occasionally the system works, though. I remember one suspect I knew defending himself against what he said were totally bogus domestic violence charges. The woman came and testified against him and he lost. A week after the trial, and before his sentencing, his lawyer came and told him the government had just disclosed that they had discovered the complainant had three separate perjury convictions in three other states for being caught lying in domestic violence testimony.
reply