Is Writing A Critical Review Of A Piece Of Software Trademark Infringement?
from the one-would-hope-not dept
Greg Beck writes "Public Citizen late yesterday filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit in Florida by two affiliated infomercial companies that are attempting to shut down negative reviews of their day trading software on the website InfomercialScams.com. They are claiming that running a website where consumers can post reviews of their products constitutes trademark infringement and a variety of other wrongs, and are seeking triple damages and attorneys' fees against the site's owner. In its motion to dismiss, Public Citizen argues that the Arizona-based website operator is not subject to jurisdiction in Florida, that the websites are protected by the First Amendment, that posting reviews is not trademark infringement, and that the Communications Decency Act protects a website owner from liability for what users post on the site." Once again, it looks like companies are trying to misuse intellectual property laws to prevent legal free speech.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
I wonder which is more appropriate,
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: I wonder which is more appropriate,
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Depends
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Depends
You can easily go to the website mentioned above and read the reviews. (It's at the top of the home page, in giant text, highlighted a lovely yellow color) It's more than on review of more than one product-- but even *that* doesn't matter. What matters is that they are suing the website owner for things other people left on his web site.
Could it be slander from a competitor? Who can tell? That doesn't change the fact that they're going after the wrong person.
But, now a whole lot more people are going to know about the bad reviews of their (apparently shitty) product-- as I've never heard of the site or the product until now.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Depends
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Depends
Seeing as how the next time some cool gadget comes out and you'll go flocking to a website to see the reviews, you dorpass will see YOU are also part of the "foolish masses", whether it's listening to paid reviewers who haven't lost any money on the product, or consumers who have.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Depends
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Florida - A Haven For Fraud Artists?
It's odd that out of 50 states, the one state that was key to electing G.W. Bush happened to be Florida, neh?
In the past the scammers have had lots of questionable tactics, like hiring hackers to bring down web pages, back in the early Internet days when they could get away with such crap.
They also hired shills to hype their non-existent products, contests or get-rich-quick schemes on anti-fraud web pages, looking to victimize people who had already proved themselves to be suckers.
Those poor people would visit an anti-fraud web page, looking for help and in the forums they would find scumbags telling them oh yeah, 'that one' was a scam but if you really want to get rich instantly, visit 'our honest web pages' and give us all your money!
They would also form their own anti-fraud associations, which all the fraud artists would finance and they would put up web pages where their own 'companies' got gold stars for being so honest and so lucrative, you couldn't help but get rich if you just gave them your retirement savings or your kid's college fund, the money you saved for that hip operation or whatever other money you happened to have laying around.
They specialized in scamming old people, who have an old-time belief in the truth, justice and honor. What suckers, huh?
I'd sure hate to give offense to these scumbags but it's my opinion they are still operating out of Florida after all these years, still making millions stealing from the naive and the elderly and also in my humble opinion, this 'investment software' and these idiot lawsuits are just a logical extension of their past practices.
It would be too bad if these assholes roasted in Hell, don't you think? In any case, I'd wager their lawsuits are specious at best.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
How do they sleep at night?
And fours years later it was Ohio. Your point?
The president is far from perfect, but I get the impression that some people would blame him for the weather if they could. I doubt that there would be less scammers around if Gore or Kerry had won.
It's funny that those who claim that Bush "Stole the election" seven years ago are conspicuously silent about Kennedy doing the same thing twenty years before. I wonder why?
Back on point, it's true that Florida seems to attract an unusual amount of scum, but this is nothing new; the land speculations of 1928 and 1929 are at least partly credited with the Crash of '29.
Separating retirees from their life-savings is, sadly, a multi-billion-dollar business. I wonder how these people sleep at night.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: How do they sleep at night?
Kennedy stole the election 20 years before Bush? Gee, if TED Kennedy had won the Presidency in 1980 (2000 - 20 = 1980, right?), I'm sure the country would be much different now!
As for John Kennedy stealing the election in 1960, there are plenty of people who say that Nixon was cheating himself, and that's the real reason he didn't protest the results. I wasn't around back then, but considering Nixon's later actions, it wouldn't surprise me.
As for the real subject, I've seen parts of infomercials for both these products and figured they weren't worth the CD's the software is loaded onto. I hope the judge throws this lawsuit out instantly.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: How do they sleep at night?
And fours years later it was Ohio. Your point?
That comment was just an interesting aside with only a tenuous connection to the original post. Still, thanks for diving into it, apropos of almost nothing!
Most people will admit it was a little strange that all the poll irregularities, hanging chads, disenfranchised voters etcetera all happened in the one state where GW's brother happened to be the governor. The odds were 50 to 1 against it.
So far as I know, Jeb Bush wasn't governor of Ohio in 2004 and Ohio didn't experience significant and generally unexplained irregularities. So what's your point? I didn't say scammers were caused by Bush and I didn't say there would be fewer scammers around if Gore or Kerry had won. I guess some people see what they want to see.
Also, what does an assassinated president have to do with anything at all on this particular page?
Nevermind! I don't much care and anyway, it has nothing to do with this particular topic.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
IPRED2, sucks
It included trademark infringement as an IP infringement:
"Member States shall ensure that all intentional infringements of an intellectual property right on a commercial scale, and attempting, aiding or abetting and inciting such infringements, are treated as criminal offences."
The intention was to limit it to counterfeiting but the wording is broad enough to take down, for example, a commercial website publishing bad reviews of Pepsi.
Intentional? Yes, Commercial? Yes, Infringement? Yes.
Hence criminal.
'Infringement' should have been split between copyright and trademarks, and a 'deception' clause included in trademarks.
To be a counterfeit trademark suitable for a criminal prosecution, the intention should be to deceive! It will be one of those laws used to intimidate and silence bad reviews of products.
So a counterfeit levi's factory would come under this, but use of the word Levi's in discussions of crappy jeans made in sweatshops in Indonesia, would not, even if it comes from a commercial site, even if it's published in a commercially released book or documentry.
What do they mean 'attempting' to commit a trademark violation! How can you set out to violate a trademark and fail?
I'm loving it? Just Do it? Rip burn mix? It's trivial to violate a trademark, so failure to infringe a trademark makes no sense!
What do they mean 'abetting' a trademark violation is a criminal offence??? What exactly constitutes abetting??
That's the problem when you try to lump different commercial rights under a misleading name 'intellectual property', you end up with worthless crud like this.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Meta Tags
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Unless we become a more Orwellian society - which we seem to be heading quickly down that road anyway.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Striesand effect in play
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
o_O
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Trademark is not Copyright
The META tag exists to provide information about the page. Playboy's own Keywords metatag is content="Sex, Playboy Models, Playmates, Playboy Magazine, Nude Women" (neither Penthouse nor Hustler use any Keywords tags anymore). As long as the words are relevant to the page there's no misuse, and there's clearly no confusion.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You can't slander a product
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Oh, and...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Wouldn't trademark infringement require taking a trademarked brandname, logo, or other and using it as if it were your own? From what I can tell, no one did that. No one ever said, "Hey come buy my Crappy Product(tm)"m
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
wtf
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Web User opinions...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]