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Chicago Law Firm Sues Over Hyperlink To Trademarked Name
TheSpoom writes "Large Chicago law firm Jones Day are suing internet startup BlockShopper over the issue of whether linking to a business with their trademarked name should be legal. It would seem they are using trademark dilution as a tool to get BlockShopper to cease linking to their website. The EFF has filed an amicus curiae, as might be expected. If Jones Day wins this suit, anyone linking using a trademarked name may be in legal hot water."
Yeah, but honestly, I wonder if they even sent them an email before suing them in federal court. And even then, couldn't they have found some sort of invasion of privacy statute?
I realize the point of this suit is to get them to settle and just stop linking, but at least try to make it sound legitimate.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Well, Ive had the same experience. A local real estate company sent me a Cease and Desist Letter in regard to domains that they wanted, but did not want to offer compensation for.
The letter consisted of threatening to sue me, file CRIMINAL charges against me, and restraining orders. It also bordered on libel, as it stated for a fact that owning these domains was libelous and slanderous, without any court of law coming to that finding. The company who hired the, in my opinion, unethical attorney to send this letter was Caton Commercial
Since they sent that letter, and I published it on-line for my lawyer to read, the results seem to have been that their company name 'Caton Commercial' now comes up with the second result in google pointing to the Will County website which lists all the current and pending legal cases they are involved in personally, and because of their business practices.
Is there something about real estate where the blinders to the outside world are so intense, that they stop the line of thought the prevents a company from considering the 'law of unintended consequences'?
They can't libel you by communicating privately with you. But isn't threatening criminal prosecution to get their way in a civil matter bordering on blackmail?
However with Trademarks and Copyrights if you don't defend yourself against ALL the violations (even if you 'like' them), don't you forfeit the right to do so?
I never got this but... why does USA wants to solve everything via lawyers?
I fell over, let's sue someone.
uh no.
1. Their stocks wouldn't plummet to 0.
2. Those 3 companies (esp MS) have more lawyers than this law firm and a much bigger bankroll to appeal this to the end of time.
MS has fended off the government by themselves. With Google and Yahoo! backing them, they can wipe this law firm off the map.
"There is no real right or wrong, just what the majority accepts at the time."
Right, but it is one thing to say "This is a critcism of X®" where X® links to the company's website, and quite another to say "This article is a review of various manufactures of foos, such as A®, B®, C® and have B® link to a scathing disparagement without evidence to back it up, insted of B®'s website -- particularly if A® and C® link correctly.
You can certainly criticize B®, but what you can not do is use B® as identifying anything other than the owner or product associated with the trademark.
What if all the trademarks were links to reviews and not to their holder's websites -- that is not single out B® for harsher treatment? I think this would still be infringement becuase using a trademark to refer to something about what the trademark represents and not what it represents directly, is infringement.
That might be a tough concept for tech-heads: after all the name is just a moniker for whatever metadata it is associated with in the present context, whether it be a corporate website, picture of a prodect, or a criticism of same. But that's a rational technical argument and not a legal one.
I suppose, in the context of a web page, a non-infringing use of a trademark would be a link to an image of the product, or the website of the trademark holder, in the same way that a non-infringing use of a trademarked company name would be to associate it with an address and telephone number in a directory.
Similarly, in a Consumer Reports-style (and I probably infringed on Consumer Reports trademark there -- using it as an adjective) review of various manufacturers, a list of trademarked names, and the locations (pages) where the holder is reviwed is fair game: the trademark refers to the holder, and the page number refers to the review.
IANAL, and am not even sure of the case law on this subject, but I think that so long as a trademark is (a) noted as such, and (b) refers to either what is trademarked or the holder, it's use is fair game. I remember when Slashdot used to use a stylized IBM® graphic to refer to articles about IBM. IBM politely requested that the stylization be dropped, IIRC, but that the use to refer to articles about them was permitted.
In Liberty, Rene
As a move to avoid the possibility of getting caught up in a suit, I think Google, Yahoo, MSNLive, Ask and every other engine should remove any reference to this domain.
If no one can find you via search engines, and no one links to you, what good is your site? They would probably sue the engines if they de-listed that domain for some wacky antitrust mumbo jumbo, "conspiracy to not help us make a living" or somesuch.
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