LSU Law School Sues Student Over Website

hij writes: "The NY Times has an article that gives details about how the LSU Law School is suing one of its own students for a web site he maintains. The web site contains information about the Law School and also includes articles that are critical of the Law School."

Comments

Looks like the student is gonna make a good lawyer

[atari2600]

From the article

The site's home page bears a disclaimer saying it is not affiliated with the law school.

Mr. Dorhauer has studied the law of domain names and said he was confident he would prevail. Legal experts who have inspected his Web site said he had a good case.

Ms. Esman said the school had made a mistake in asserting that Mr. Dorhauer aims to make money from the site. "They do seem to be focusing their complaint incorrectly on commercial uses," she said. "He's not offering any services whatsoever

Well it looks like the school should have talked more to the young man before suing him outright - after all he wasn't making pennies and he did have a disclaimer that his site has nothing to do with the law school

Non-commercial is a near-total defense

[Froomkin]

If your site is *totally* non-commercial, almost none of the trademark laws in the US apply to you. The major exception is "tarnishment," which these days means associating the mark with kiddie pr0n or the like. With that exception, trademark laws protect marks from **COMMERCIAL** confusion, not from criticism or parody.

The NYT article is in error, I believe, when it quotes a lawyer as saying the use of the school's colors is relevant to the outcome of this case. It is not. What is relevant is whether the use is commercial or non-commercial. The test for "commercial" is perhaps more hair-trigger than it ought to be: some cases have found asking for donations, selling a t-shirt, or running banner ads to be 'commercial' although it's unlikely we'd treat at least the donations as 'commercial' activity in any other context.

Hmmm

[NiftyNews]

When lawyers sue lawyers, no one wins.

No, wait. That makes them too busy to sue any of us. So I guess all of us win!

Before it gets slashdotted.. what it's about...

[linuxrunner]

Copy and Pasted from the "Their Sueing Me" Page:

----------

They Did It.
The Law School filed its lawsuit against me, their student, conveniently making sure I received notice thereof less than 48 hours before exams started. I barely had time to scan in the lawsuit and post it, but I did, and you can find a link to it below.

Many thanks to my wife, Jennifer, for putting up with me. Also, thanks to all my friends and acquaintances at the Law Center who have offered their support to me in this battle. Thanks also to all hundreds of visitors to this site who have written me in the last few weeks. It's great to have so many people--including many former LSU Law School grads--offer their assistance to me in this battle.

Now it's official: Louisiana State University HAS sued me....

My name is Douglas Dorhauer, and I am a student at the LSU Law Center. This site is my personal creation, built by me for my own use. In the event you find its contents of use, then consider it my gift to you.

Because of the similarity between this site's name and that of a local law school (of which I am a student), this site has recently been under attack. Specifically, in a letter dated November 30, 2001, Marc S. Whitfield of Taylor, Porter, Brooks & Phillips, L.L.P., legal counsel to Louisiana State University asked me to give up the domain name "lsulaw.com."

After researching the points in Mr. Whitfield's letter, I responded with a point-by-point rebuttal of each issue he raised. That response went unacknowledged for nearly two months before I requested Mr. Whitfield update me on his client's position concerning this matter.

Immediately, Mr. Whitfield responded with a threat of a lawsuit. I replied with a request to attempt an amicable resolution.

Mr. Whitfield's response to my request to amicably resolve the matter came in the form of a lawsuit naming me as defendant. Currently, I have just finished final exams. After regaining consciousness early next week, I will respond to the lawsuit, file cross-claims, etc. As always, I will post all correspondence here.

The premise of my argument is simple: all the laws Mr. Whitfield cites in his initial letter require a showing of "commerciality." I earnestly contend that this site is emphatically noncommercial, and, therefore, not susceptible of the trademark violations alleged by Mr. Whitfield.

They should be paying him, not suing him

[Simon Brooke]

The Site in Question is lsulaw.com

OK, let's do a quick comparison.

lsulaw.com

• Clear layout, loads fast
• Consistent navigation
• Clearly labelled links to all major departments of the School
• Clearly labelled links to information about the school
• Clear links to other Web resources of use to law students
• Works well in all browsers including text browsers

law.lsu.com

• Flash intro screen, doesn't work on all browsers, alternative redirect doesn't work on all browsers..
• Gaphics-heavy site, takes for ever to load.
• No links to other web resources of use to students
• All navigation is graphics without appropriate alt text, so unusable on text browsers or by visually disabled users

In other words, his is a reasonably competent, reasonably professional Web site, accurately describing the school, and theirs is an incompetent, unusable pile of dross.

I think that's what the quarrel is about, actually.

It's worth pointing out that because of the poor provision for disabled access, http://www.law.lsu.edu/ would be illegal in most of Europe.