2004-09-01

cybersquatter or cyber-protester?

Generally, the courts allow you to squat someone's domain name to protest the organization whose name you have registered (see TMI Inc. v. Maxwell (5th Cir.) Lucas Nursery & landscaping v. Grosse, Taubman v. Webfeats (6th Cir.)), sometimes to parody them as well, but apparently not to protest other issues.

See Coca-Cola v Purdy (8th Cir. 2004) (First Amendment does not protect the use of another's trademark in a domain name to attract an unwitting and unwilling audience to the message of the domain name holder) [via blogbook].

Compare Planned Parenthood v. Bucci (SDNY 1997), aff'd. (2d Cir., Feb. 9, 1998), cert. denied (1998), the Second Circuit affirmed a lower court injunction restraining an anti-abortion activist from operating a Web site using the url plannedparenthood.com and from representing his web site as the Planned Parenthood Home Page. The court found that defendant's use of the registered mark PLANNED PARENTHOOD created a likelihood of consumer confusion as to the source of the information; defendant had a First Amendment right to speak against abortion, but not to do so under plaintiff's registered trademark; and defendant had no basis for defending his use of the mark as "parody.”

1 Comments:

Blogger Jonathan said...

My experience with AdWords has been that company names are blocked, even in a protest mode. Given the inconsistency of Google's action in this area, it would appear that the use of proper names triggers the call to a human editor.
Jonathan
Atlanta Bankruptcy Attorney

9:28 AM  

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