Infomercial Companies Never Learn: Another One Suing Site For Negative Reviews

from the or-you-could-just-improve-your-product dept

Greg Beck, from Public Citizen, has written us in the past a few times about bogus trademark lawsuits being brought against online review sites, such as InfomercialScams.com. Back in May there was a case where a company advertising its wares via infomercials sued the site for trademark infringement. Clearly, it was not the trademark use that was the problem (especially since it's difficult to see how that's trademark infringement). It was merely a way to try to get negative reviews (written by third party users of the site) taken offline. A similar case came up this fall when the infamous Video Professor sued 100 anonymous critics on the site, demanding that the owner of InfomercialScams.com turn over their IP addresses.

Beck is now back alerting us to the fact that the Video Professor has withdrawn his subpoena for info from the site, but is still forging ahead with the lawsuit (and is seeking the identity of a user on Wikipedia). However, he also notes that yet another company that advertises via infomercials is now suing InfomercialScams, claiming trademark infringement. Once again, this is clearly not trademark infringement, but an attempt by the company to bully an independent site into taking negative reviews offline. Just imagine if any of these companies put half as much effort into improving their products and services instead of calling the lawyers whenever anyone has anything critical to say about these firms.

Filed Under: infomercials, reviews, slapp
Companies: infomercialscams, lifestyle lift, public citizen

Video Professor Sues Anonymous Critics

from the buy-my-product dept

If you watch enough TV, you've probably come across the commercials for "the video professor" who offers DVD videos teaching you how to do things like use your computer. The commercials involve an appeal from the CEO and founder of the company to "buy my product" and promote how you can get a trial for "free!" However, if you look around online, you find many, many complaints that the company ended up charging people money for the supposedly "free" products. What is actually happening is that when you sign up for the "free" trial, you're actually signing up for a subscription to receive other training videos periodically. The problem is that many people don't realize this -- and claim that they were mislead (in many ways, this is similar to the Amazon Prime mess that still hasn't been cleared up. Whether or not the company clearly explains to buyers what they're signing up for is open to debate.

However, with such widespread criticism for its practices online, it isn't surprising that the company is concerned. Of course, rather than addressing those criticisms, instead the company has decided to sue. Greg Beck writes in to point out that the company (which tells people to look for reviews online) has sued 100 anonymous critics of the company claiming trademark violations and defamation. Lots of companies seem to think negative reviews constitute a trademark violation, but a review is a perfectly legitimate use of a trademark. Defamation depends specifically on what the reviewers said, so it's difficult to judge that aspect of the lawsuits. However, to tell people to look for reviews online, and then go out and sue a bunch of folks who negatively reviewed your product seems like highly questionable activity.

Filed Under: infomercials, reviews, slapp, video professor