Slashdot Mirror
Google sued as PetsWarehouse Lawsuit Continues.
Ikari Gendou writes "In April, Slashdot reported that Robert Novak, owner of Internet pet store Pets Warehouse filed a $15,000,000US lawsuit against several individuals who made comments about his company's poor service on an Internet mailing list. Also named in it and in the suit that followed were the owner of the mailing list, the owners of several informational sites about the lawsuit, the owners of other forums where the lawsuit was discussed, the attorney for the defense, and several sites that merely ran banner ads promoting the defense fund set up for the lawsuit. Some defendents settled out of fear, and were forced to pay cash, transfer their personal domain names to Novak, or even run banner ads for Petswarehouse on their websites. Now, the attorney for the defense has announced that in round three of the lawsuit, Google has been sued, as well as several other sites that have carried news about the lawsuit, such as search engine Judge-For-Yourself.com and pet stores DoctorDog.com and FerretStore.com. Robert Novak is representing himself in this lawsuit, and thus it is effectively costing him nothing to persue this campaign of harassment. He's already gotten several thousand dollars from settlements and cost the defendents considerably more than that in legal fees. More details should be posted soon here, including court documents that tell why Google was added to the suit."
Plaintiff:
Robert Novak,
d/b/a Pets Warehouse.com
Defendants:
Overture Services, Inc.
Google, Inc.
Innovative Marketing Solutions, Inc.d/b/a Kanoodle.com
Neeps, Inc. d/b/a Theferretstore.com
John Holdefehr d/b/a Judge-for-yourself.com
Biochemics, Inc. d/b/a Doctordog.com
COURT DOCKET - Third Lawsuit
09-24-2002 (1) Complaint filed and summons issued as to defendant(s) Biochemics, Inc., Google, Inc., John Holdefehr, Innovative Marketing Solutions, Inc., Neeps, Inc., Overture Services, Inc. Filing fee $150.00. Receipt number: 7370. Jury trial demanded. filed by pro se Robert Novak. (Attachments: #1 Civil Cover Sheet) (Romano, Daniel) (entered: 09-26-2002)
09-26-2002 (2) Notice of Report on the filing of an action regarding a patent orTrademark Infringement sent to Washington DC (Romano, Daniel) (Entered: 09-26-2002)
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Robert Novak is representing himself in this lawsuit, and thus it is effectively costing him nothing to persue this campaign of harassment.
The comments are about "Pet Warehouse", which is here while the link is for Pets Warehouse.
What happened, according to the Salon article, linked in the original /. article is that the "s" was left off.
More understandable since Pet Warehouse is a reputable outfit predating the dotcom boom. I've dealt with them lots of times.
Know what, you're probably a better target than Google. Why? Well, you don't have as much money, not having as much money means that you are forced to hire a lawyer, fly out to NY (if you don't already live there), etc. That means you're far more likely to just say "Screw this" and settle out of court as it may even be cheaper.
Here's a relavent quote from an article on the case:
Resler said his lawyer was confident they could defeat Novak in court. But, Resler said, when the lawyer told the defendants how much it would cost, "we said, 'Settle.' "
My hope is that after Google finishes with this case, they counter-sue the guy's ass off.
To Hell with Mr. Novak. Is it just me, or isn't one of the pillars of the law in this country called "Free Speech". As I understand it, I can say what I want about Mr. Novak and his petstore, and as long as it is based on opinions of fact, he has no right to sue me. It isn't slandering if I had a bad experience and I tell the world about it. But from Mr. Novak's sick and twisted interpretation of the law, the Better Business Bureau itself should be illegal. Get a clue A55HOLE.
here :)
"Old man yells at systemd"
It's now been changed, /.'s front page summary had stated that Novak was "defending himself". It is now changed to "representing himself". Once again /. plays revisionist news. :)
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Hopefully this won't have a negative affect on another online Pet store: Drs. Foster and Smith's Pet Warehouse. Their website being "www.petwarehouse.com" and this buffoon's being "www.petswarehouse.com".
In my experience, they are a very reliable source for all kinds of supplies, and it would be a shame for people to associate their site with this litigation crazy moron.
Xavodim.com
According to this followup post to the original complaint about them...
5 /msg00213.html
http://fins.actwin.com/aquatic-plants/month.20010
I made a rather unfortunate typo in my last message - I was referring to *Pets* Warehouse, not Pet Warehouse. My apologies (to you and to Pet Warehouse!).
PetsWarehouse BBB Rating
The Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan New York, Inc. has provided an unsatisfactory rating, the Bureau's lowest, for PetsWarehouse. The BBB site states:
"This firm operates an affiliated business on the internet offering products through its Copaigue location. This firm has received 21 complaints in the last 36 months, of which 11 of those 21 complaints were filed in the last 12 months. Complaints to the Bureau have alleged: 1) nondelivery of ordered merchandise and 2) credit or billing problems. This firm has a pattern of not responding to complaints to its attention by the Bureau."
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Absolutely. The right to petition the government for the redress of grievances (commonly called "suing") is enshrined in the bill of rights.
I'm afriad you've got it mixed up. The tactic is called "SLAPP" - Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation - and it's widely used by large corporations to silence their critics.
Only if you consider an outcome whereby corporate wrongdoers can operate without fear a positive outcome...This is almost why "loser pays" is a horrible idea. Amalgamated Profits, Inc. is poisioning your town? Under loser pays, if you try to sue and their high priced lawyers beat the ones you managed to scrape enough pennies together to hire, not only are you poisoned and broke from your own legal fees, you've got to pay Amalgamated Profits, Inc.'s fees. So you don't dare sue.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Using an ad-filtering proxy will keep him from deriving that benefit from a slashdotting. Running something like while true; do lynx -dump http://www.petswarehouse.com >/dev/null; done will also result in no ad views.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Well, as of 10:21am (Pacific Whatever Time) the server could no longer be found by my browser, despite being able to find it repeatedly since 10:07am, so it appears that your warnings have been in vain.
It's a shame really, I was kind of curious about that hamster thing...
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Please note that Pets' Warehouse is the offending company, not Pet Warehouse, a perfectly legitamate business.
In case of slashdotting, here is a comment from the petswarehouse.com website that I saved:
Religion is the opium of the people. Evolution is the opium of scientists.
Libel Resource Defense Center definition of libel.
WHIOS PetsWarehouse.com
Administrative Contact
Robert Novak-> bob@petswarehouse.com
Pets Warehouse
1550 Sunrise Hwy
Copiague, ny 11726
US
Phone 631-789-5400
Fax 631.789.9340
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
As much as I despise what Mr. Novak did with the whole fish complaint thing, a quick read of the ACTUAL LAWSUIT shows that this new suit has NOTHING to do with free speech or negative comments from unhappy customers. This is a completely new and UNRELATED lawsuit, that just happens to be from the same guy. Petswarehouse.Com is suing Google, and other search engines and petstores because they are using the Petswarehouse.com trademark to steal customers. Google is included in the suit because they are allowing paid placement customers (competing petstores) to use the PetsWarehouse.Com trademark as a keyword to display their ads. The competing petsores themselves are alleged to have put the petswarehouse.com trademark inside their meta-tags to attract customers. The suit also alleges that PetsWarehouse complained about the trademark infringement to Google, but that Google refused to abide by their own policy and remove the infringing material.
I hate to say it, but Mr. Novak may actually have a valid trademark suit here!
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
As much as I despise what Mr. Novak did with the whole fish complaint thing, a quick read of the ACTUAL LAWSUIT shows that this new suit has NOTHING to do with free speech or negative comments from unhappy customers. This is a completely new and UNRELATED lawsuit, that just happens to be from the same guy. Petswarehouse.Com is suing Google, and other search engines and petstores because they are using the Petswarehouse.com trademark to steal customers. Google is included in the suit because they are allowing paid placement customers (competing petstores) to use the PetsWarehouse.Com trademark as a keyword to display their ads. The competing petsores themselves are alleged to have put the petswarehouse.com trademark inside their meta-tags to attract customers. The suit also alleges that PetsWarehouse complained about the trademark infringement to Google, but that Google refused to abide by their own policy and remove the infringing material.
I hate to say it, but Mr. Novak may actually have a valid trademark suit here!
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Here in California, there are a county law libraries at each county. When people file civil suits, they pay a filing fee.(Vary by county and type, but about $200 currently. Will go up soon. Law Libraries get about $10-15 out of that.) Part of that goes the the operation of County Law Libraries.
Directors of County Law Libraries ususally have both
a JD and MLIS. May or may not have active bar membership. The staffs usually have paralegal and/or Library school trainings. They can provide assistannce in your research but not providing legal advice. Please be understanding if the library staffs want to stay from that very fine line. They can tell you which form book may have the form you need. But they can not tell you exactly which form you need to use. Etc.
I am currently working at one of those law libraries while putting myself through library school. About 60% of my patrons are attorneys and 30% are Pro Se/Per Pro litigants. (Researchers/Students make up the rest) Some patrons had great result using our service. Even if you hire an attorney, research on your own can make you a better legal advice consumer.
Go to American Association of Law Libraries
http://www.aallnet.org
Go the chapters, find the regional chapter in your areas to see if there are public law libraries in your area.
His message board. Last I checked, the board was moderated and all messages had to be pre-approved by a moderator, but it looks like one fellow has found his way around that. Congrats, Mr. Lignatron.
Don't forget to check out his message board's terms of use. Oddly enough, you're not allowed to mention the fact that the owner of the company sues his customers (and everyone else, for that matter). Any mention of the lawsuit that makes it onto his board is deleted very quickly. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try, though. Even if the message gets stuck in an approval queue and never get posted by a moderator, as seems to be the general case, one of his moderators will still have to take the time to delete it. And I get the feeling that his moderators might not even know about the lawsuit, or else they won't associate with him.
One piece of advice to those attacking his message board: if the goal is to warn his customers about what his company is up to, linking to Petsforum, TheDefenseFund, or this Slashdot story would be MUCH more effective than linking to goatse.cx. Our goal is to bring his behavior into public light, not to gross people out. That's what we have Slashdot for. I know old habits die hard, but this is a chance for us to put our trolling/crapflooding skills to good use, and work for a higher goal.
It's funny how after the lawsuit business started, Bob Novak changed the name of his message board to "The Civilized Pet Forum." Yeah, right.
Then there are the requistite requisite mailto links. What good would this post be without the requisite mailto links? Keep these requisite mailto links in mind for future use. These requisite mailto links make the world go round!
Archived mirror of PetsWarehouse page.
Archived company info.
Archived map to store
Domain registration info
GNU Wget - a website downloading tool. Useful for accessing sites that are Slashdotted, by hitting the site over, and over, and over, and over, and over...
Netcraft Info for Petswarehouse
I wrote it, so I think I'd remember...