Lowes Tries To Silence Sucks Site For Complaints About Lowes

from the did-someone-call-Streisand's-name? dept

We've covered a variety of cases involving so-called "sucks sites," where someone registers as a domain name the name of a company and appends sucks to the end in order to create a complaint site. Companies have often complained that these sites are trademark violations, but that usually doesn't pass the moron in a hurry test. The latest such case involves home improvement store Lowes. A guy who bought a fence from them was upset that the installers botched the job. Lowes refused to take responsibility, so he set up a site at Lowes-Sucks.com and promptly received a cease and desist from the company claiming trademark violation. While early on, a few companies were able to get sucks sites shut down, it's become a lot rarer, as judges tend to recognize that criticism is perfectly legitimate -- and no one is likely to confuse a sucks site as being endorsed by the company. In the meantime, of course, in sending out such a cease and desist, Lowes has just drawn a lot more attention to the fact that they won't take responsibility for the botched fence install. Wouldn't it have just been better for business to fix the damn fence?

Filed Under: streisand effect, sucks site
Companies: lowes