Supreme Court Denies Falwell's "Typosquatting" Case

from the sorry-try-again dept

Jerry Falwell's been waging an ongoing battle against people that run Web sites critical of him. His latest fight saw him sue the owner of fallwell.com, a site that decries his views on homosexuality, alleging it was typosquatting -- improperly drawing visitors by using a common misspelling of his official falwell.com site. A Federal appeals court disagreed, and now the Supreme Court has refused to hear the case, backing up the lower court's ruling. Of course, the good reverend has never really been able to accept criticism, and since he can't get around the First Amendment, he's had to resort to other tactics, like alleging trademark abuse. But the judges in the appeals court made it clear that the criticism site made no attempt to confuse visitors, even including ample disclaimers and links to Falwell's official site. It's interesting to note that the same appeals court ruled against the operator of the "People Eating Tasty Animals" site that parodied People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals -- so it wouldn't be surprising to see Falwell or his supporters accuse them of political or religious bias by favoring what they consider a "left-wing" group. But the facts of the cases are pretty different, and in Falwell's instance, the critical site makes it very clear that it's not affiliated with Falwell, so the chances of a visitor being confused into thinking they were at his official site are pretty slim.
Hide this

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


  1. identicon
    cycle003, 17 Apr 2006 @ 5:00pm

    Good!!

    First post!

    Good for the courts. Falwell can't take the criticism even though he loves to dish it out.

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.