Day in Court
Suing antidomains can be a very bad ideaâ€"unless you want all eyes on your nemesis.
Companies don't have much legal recourse against antidomains or hate sites under intellectual property laws. Unlike the flat-out appropriation of a company name, any domain name that combines the corporate name with the word sucks is not likely to be confused with the real company's Web siteâ€"especially if the site contains information critical of the company. Therefore, unless they defame the company, sites like Homedepotsucks.com and Flamingfords.com are usually protected by the First Amendment.
According to Ronald Lopez, a partner at law firm Thelen Reid & Priest in San Francisco, defamation may be hard to prove and the law varies from state to state. In general, in order for a site or the statements on it to be considered defamatory against a company, that company must show that it suffered actual damagesâ€"like losing sales or having a merger fall throughâ€"from a false statement. Plus, in product disparagement, the false statement has to have been posted with "reckless disregard" for the truth. Those are tough standards. A company's best hope? "You may have more of a claim where the site is trying to make a buck, engaging in some sort of commerce," says Lopez.
Suing antidomains can be a very bad idea though, even if you think you have a strong case. A lawsuit draws more attention to the site, giving the owner a bigger soapbox. If you lose, it gets even worse.
When Web users go to Bridgestone-firestone.net they're greeted with the company's logo. Travel deeper into the site and it's clear that this site is not owned by Firestone. Jack Myers, the owner of the domain and a former employee of the company, posts assertions that the tire company denied him severance pay unfairly, sold millions of defective tires, and "has been under investigation for its role in the devastating civil war in Liberia."
Bridgestone Firestone waged a legal war against Myers last year, trying to win the domain name back. Myers' site gives a blow-by-blow account of the proceedings, posting the cease-and-desist orders and the full World Intellectual Property Organisation decision. Ultimatelyâ€"and surprisinglyâ€"Myers won. WIPO ruled that "although the Domain Name registered by [Jack Myers] is identical or confusingly similar to the trademarks in which the Complainants have rights, [Jack Myers] has legitimate fair use and free speech rights and interests in respect of the Domain Name."
Now, as Web surfers seek information about Firestone's tire troubles, they stumble onto Myers' site, which details not only those problems but also his fight with the company over the domain name, plus his assertion that it treats employees unfairlyâ€"the reason he started the site in the first place.
Faced with a similar situation, the Coca-Cola Company handled things a bit better. It knows it can't argue with free speech so it doesn't go after hate sites. Greenpeace protested Coke's use of hydrofluorocarbons in refrigeration units on Cokespotlight.com, a site that parodies its signature style by morphing the stylised "Coca-Cola" logo into one that says "Climate Change." Coke respondedâ€"but not with a cease-and-desist order. Instead, it worked with Greenpeace, actually changing the refrigeration of its vending machines. "If they're raising issues about the company, then we try and take a look at what the issues are and if we should be doing something," says Kari Bjorhus, director of interactive communications at Coca-Cola. "We don't look at the problem as the Web site. The problem is the issue."
Meanwhile, at the Brookings Institution, pressure against the Brookingsinstitution.com cybersquatter finally paid off. "We've got our good name back!" the Institution's Roseman trumpeted to us in an email, a few weeks after the initial heated message from the interloper. "The person who registered it gave it up without a fight. We didn't have to file any sort of grievance. And we didn't pay any severance fees." If only all online headaches went away so easily.
FRIENDS - Regarding Corporate America, think you will enjoy the first 3 chapters of my upcoming book, I LEAP OVER THEIR HEADS!, regarding General Electric (GE) and their reprehensible behavior. You can read them by going to www.edwardbaskett.com.