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Sun 7 Nov, 2004 02:44 pm
From Wired - full story here:
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,65612,00.html?tw=rss.TOP
Careful Where You Complain
Associated Press
12:00 AM Nov. 05, 2004 PT
DALLAS, Georgia -- When Alan and Linda Townsend were unhappy with the sprayed-on siding applied to their house, the frustrated couple launched a website to complain and to give other unsatisfied customers a forum.
Visitor postings to the site said the product, Spray on Siding, cracked, bubbled and buckled. For their efforts, the Townsends got slapped with a lawsuit by the product's maker.
The federal case may help shape the boundaries of online speech.
Companies routinely go after individuals when they feel people are maligning them on the internet. And often, legal scholars say, the website's owners don't fight back at all.
In this dispute, North Carolina-based Alvis Coatings, which supplied the siding product used in the Townsends' $16,721 project, claims the couple's site infringes on the company's trademarks, defames its product and intentionally misleads and confuses consumers.
Alvis is seeking more than $75,000 in damages in addition to unspecified punitive damages and attorney fees.
"We could lose everything, including the house, and still be in debt," said Alan Townsend, whose house is valued at around $150,000.
Though neither side was looking for a brawl over speech rights, the lawsuit is headed that way, said Paul Levy, an attorney for Public Citizen, which agreed to help represent the Townsends.
Internet law expert Doug Isenberg of Georgia State University said the courts need to better define free-speech issues for the internet, and this case could help.
"The right to criticize is certainly protected in general, but it is not unlimited," Isenberg said. "Some of those limits include how you can use someone else's trademark."
The complaint filed by Alvis alleges that the name of the Townsends' website, spraysiding.com, "is confusingly similar" to the official Alvis site, sprayonsiding.com, as well as its trademark, Spray on Siding.
Levy argues that the Townsends have the right to use the domain name they purchased.
Courts have provided greater protection to noncommercial sites, such as the Townsends', "but it is not quite so cut-and-dry to say if it is noncommercial use it's acceptable," Isenberg said.
Judges also weigh whether a person is likely to confuse the gripe site with the real one, said Wendy Seltzer, staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil-liberties group. A site that bashes a product is not likely to create such confusion, she said.
Companies have threatened scores of criticism sites with trademark infringement and have lost many of the cases that have actually gone to court, Seltzer said. But most of the time, she said, the site owners simply agree to stop before a lawsuit is even filed. Thus, the boundaries of their rights are never tested.........
Reasonable attempt to stop defamation, or attempt to hinder free speech?
Interesting - I think our defamation laws lean more towards protection from defamation than yours do.
This will be an interesting case.
Does anyone know the ramifications of someone defaming you on a business message board- am a member of a message board for an Adult club in Vegas- annoyed someone and know they have taken to slamming me- by name- on the board- drumming up people to ask the owners to boot me out- no rules broken just petty jealousy- does the 1st allow such slander?
Bobbij
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