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.
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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.
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Spammer sues spamee
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Re: Spammer sues spamee
The bottom line, money talks.
Disgusted in Oklahoma
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