Spamming Travel Firm Sues Anti-Spammer
from the more-of-the-same dept
Here's yet another case of a company accused of spamming getting pretty upset when they're called on it. Someone asked a travel company, named cruise.com, to stop sending him spam. They continued to send him spam. He threatened to sue them under Oklahoma spam laws, and featured them on his website. They turned around and sued him for $4 million for defamation and trademark infringement. They might have trouble on both those claims. First, the guy seems to have the spams pretty well documented, including his repeated attempts to opt-out. It's tough to win a defamation claim when the facts alleged are true. Second, the trademark infringement concerns the use of their logo on his website about them -- but, as has been explained numerous times, trademark law is only to protect against confusion, not to give full rights to the trademark. It's quite unlikely that anyone going to this guy's website about how the company was spamming him would confuse the site as one officially sanctioned by the spamming company.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
Having read the complaint, motions and P&As, I'm inclined to believe it will fail on jurisdictional grounds alone.
Defendant has no business contact with anyone in VA, has never sought contact, and has never set foot there. That's pretty persuasive that defendant did not purposefully avail himself of benefits of VA law before the suit, the longstanding test for jurisdiction.
Whether defendant can make the case for Rule 11 sanctions against spammer's shyster is more doubtful though. That's hard, even when the plaintiff's pleading looks hinky.
But we can always hope. It would be nice to see a spammer's shyster go down hard.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Spammer sues spamee
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Spammer sues spamee
The bottom line, money talks.
Disgusted in Oklahoma
[ link to this | view in chronology ]