In early December the lawyers from eToys filed suit against etoy in Los Angeles Superior Court to ban its use of that domain as a trademark infringement. The court agreed, and they were granted a temporary injunction. Needless to say the members of etoy, whose work is characterized by a witty, anti-corporate subversiveness, were not pleased, especially considering that they've been using the etoy.com domain name since 1995, years before eToys was a twinkle in a venture capitalist's eye. They were forced to take down their web site or face fines of up to $10,000 a day.

Etoy didn't have a lot of money or lawyers, but they knew how to handle the press: As pop artists, they use the media as their medium. They held a press conference at the Museum of Modern Art in New York to protest the situation. "This case merely demonstrates who has the right to conduct business, operate, express themselves and exist in cyberspace," said etoy's Suzanne Meszoly. The group set up a temporary web site at a different address. Meanwhile, eToys was becoming the third most visited e-commerce site on the Web, according to Media Metrix, behind only Amazon and eBay.

It was a classic David and Goliath scenario, and public opinion on the Internet heavily favored the former. Internet civil rights activists such as John Perry Barlow rallied to etoy's cause. The anti-corporate mischief-makers rtmark encouraged surfers to boycott eToys, and even to register other domain names similar to eToys.com. Etoy filed a countersuit, and set up an online game parodying the situation entitled TOYWAR. Meanwhile, eToys offered the artists of etoy as much as $400,000 for their domain name, and possibly significantly more, but they declined to sell. The suit dragged on through December and into January.

Yesterday it ended in victory for etoy, when eToys decided to drop its lawsuit. The company acknowledged that bad publicity and the show of popular support for etoy played a role; eToys has also agreed to pay the group's legal fees, up to $40,000, and other expenses incurred during the legal struggle. "We are pleased with the outcome," a spokesman for eToys told the New York Times. "We heard from a lot of people and they overwhelmingly urged us to figure out a way to coexist with etoy, and that's what we're going to try to do."

Although this round went to etoy, it's only a partial victory. By settling, eToys doesn't forfeit the right to press its lawsuit again. More importantly, etoy was never given the opportunity to prove its case in court, and a clear legal precedent in such cases has yet to be established. Still, the group feels they've made their point. "Things on the Internet don't go away," said etoy in a statement. "'Brick and mortar' corporations do this sort of thing and then bury it — but this will always be there when you search for information on eToys."

-- LEV GROSSMAN