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Bleeping Computer Countersues Maker of SpyHunter

Posted by msmash on from the returning-the-favor dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Bleeping Computer, a longstanding popular discussion forum that helps people rid their computers of malware, has now countersued Enigma Software Group (ESG), which makes an antivirus software known as SpyHunter. Bleeping now claims that ESG has been violating Bleeping's trademarks by registering new domain names that include "bleepingcomputer" and posting some of the company's webpage's source code on other websites without its authorization, among other allegations. ESG had sued Bleeping for libel earlier this year over a series of messages that it claims disparaged SpyHunter and the company as a whole.From the filing:Enigma's lawsuit is plainly nothing more than an attempt to bully and censor Bleeping Computer, and to deter anyone who might criticize it -- one more attempt in Enigma's long pattern of threats, intimidation and litigation. Worse, however, is that all the while, Enigma has been engaged in aggressive, secretive, and cowardly attacks against Bleeping Computer, including ripping off Bleeping Computer's content and pretending it was authored by Enigma, repeatedly misusing Bleeping's registered trademark to trade upon its goodwill, and publishing blatantly false claims about Bleeping. As the following allegations demonstrate, Enigma conducts its business in a manner that is illegal, unethical and simply immoral, thereby demonstrating that Quietman7's mildly critical statements about Enigma's product, that so enraged Enigma and lead to this lawsuit, pale in comparison to the egregious misconduct Enigma perpetrates on a regular basis.

2 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. Bleeping Computer has been a big help to all by ITRambo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Pardon my "French". I check Bleeping Computer's site often, since our shop works on PC's. Their Combo Fix was a godsend back in the day, and is still useful on Windows 7 machines that are infected. Spy Hunter, on the other hand, is a piece of shit run by slim balls. I will never Spy Hunter. AdwCleaner, Combo FIx, Junkware Removal Tool and others do a better job and aren't put out by assholes.

  2. Re:Who? What? by cdrudge · · Score: 4, Informative

    1. Similar domain names have been a scam vector for so many years, if Bleep Whatever is so popular as to attract the ire of these assholes, maybe they should have been proactive years ago and bought up those domains? It's not a huge cost.

    I'm going to presume that you didn't read the actual complaint. This wasn't the competitor buying up bleepingcomputersucks.com or bleepingcomputeralternatives.com, arguably permissible domain names without causing infringement. The two domains that it explicitly mentioned in the complaint were bleepingcomputerregistryfix.com and adware.bleeping.computer.remover.getridofspywareonphone.com. Neither of those domain names would be predictable to proactively register to prevent competitors from using them. Or in the second instance, even could be registered since the 2nd level domain doesn't infringe itself. There would be a nearly infinite number of combinations of domain names and keywords that would need to be registered which definitely would have a huge cost. And both the examples I think do run foul of trademark law as they were designed to deceive legitimate trade.