49350 - Yourbrandsucks.com: Gripe Sites and Trademark or Copyright Infringement
Complaining and poking fun seem to be a way of life for many. And, this passion of complaint and satire birth gripe sites across the web. The resulting mix produces foggy legal understandings and ramifications. Finding clarity through key cases helps resolve some of the gray.
A working definition of such websites, according to Leonard Goodman of Kassel, Brock & Blackwell, LLP, states that a gripe site criticizes and encourages others to criticize a specific company, product or service. Typically, the use of a company’s trademark or tradename comes into play.
While funny to many Internet users, these sites pose problems for and are taken seriously by the companies …show more content…
v. Faber (C.D. Cal. 1998)
— Challenging the previously believed principle that you could never take a company’s logo, the court alllowed the use of Bally’s logo by Ballysucks.com (thereby, protecting criticism sites) in these terms, “An individual who wishes to engage in consumer commentary must have the full range of marks that the trademark owner has to identify the trademark owner as the object of criticism.”
PETA v. Doughney (4th Cir. 2001)
— In the registering of peta.org to parody PETA, the court ruled that two simultaneous and contradictory messages must exist and that the domain name, website content aside, did not fulfill this definition.
Lamparello v. Falwell (4th Cir. 2005)
— Contradictory to the PETA case, the web content and domain name were used to find that no commercial use or likelihood of confusion was found in the use of fallwell.com and that trademark infringement was nil.
Competitor Gripe Sites
J.K. Harris v. Kassel (N.D. Cal. 2003)
— The court ruled, “Although defendant’s uses of J.K. HARRIS were ‘frequent and obvious,’ this referential use of Plaintiff’s trademark is exactly what the nominative fair use doctrine is designed to allow.”
Sunlight Saunas v. Sundance Sauna (D. Kan.
Complaining and poking fun seem to be a way of life for many. And, this passion of complaint and satire birth gripe sites across the web. The resulting mix produces foggy legal understandings and ramifications. Finding clarity through key cases helps resolve some of the gray.
A working definition of such websites, according to Leonard Goodman of Kassel, Brock & Blackwell, LLP, states that a gripe site criticizes and encourages others to criticize a specific company, product or service. Typically, the use of a company’s trademark or tradename comes into play.
While funny to many Internet users, these sites pose problems for and are taken seriously by the companies …show more content…
v. Faber (C.D. Cal. 1998)
— Challenging the previously believed principle that you could never take a company’s logo, the court alllowed the use of Bally’s logo by Ballysucks.com (thereby, protecting criticism sites) in these terms, “An individual who wishes to engage in consumer commentary must have the full range of marks that the trademark owner has to identify the trademark owner as the object of criticism.”
PETA v. Doughney (4th Cir. 2001)
— In the registering of peta.org to parody PETA, the court ruled that two simultaneous and contradictory messages must exist and that the domain name, website content aside, did not fulfill this definition.
Lamparello v. Falwell (4th Cir. 2005)
— Contradictory to the PETA case, the web content and domain name were used to find that no commercial use or likelihood of confusion was found in the use of fallwell.com and that trademark infringement was nil.
Competitor Gripe Sites
J.K. Harris v. Kassel (N.D. Cal. 2003)
— The court ruled, “Although defendant’s uses of J.K. HARRIS were ‘frequent and obvious,’ this referential use of Plaintiff’s trademark is exactly what the nominative fair use doctrine is designed to allow.”
Sunlight Saunas v. Sundance Sauna (D. Kan.