Now that etoy has won its battle against eToys, we would like to help focus more attention on some other cases, many of them worse than the eToys case, all of them just as flimsy and as shamelessly flawed.
Without public pressure, none of these cases will be resolved except in court--if the defendants can muster the financial and psychological strength to keep their identities alive. And that's a very big if.
A peanut butter giant attacks a 75-year-old cartoon
(info here and here)
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In Germany, a leech attacks everyone
HMO Health Net attacks HealthNet.org
Leonardo Finance attacks Leonardo magazine
Mattel attacks Matt Lavallee (Matt L.)
The parents of Jean-Michel Basquiat destroy a site about their son
CBS News attacks Evolution Control Committee
Volkswagen (of slave-labor fame) destroys ISP VW.net
Mattel makes some crazy pseudo-random threats
Coca Cola attacks some senior citizens (site)
Feb. 9: Coca-Cola sees the light (and the spotlight in their future)
The Holy See swipes vaticano.org
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Autodesk, Inc. attacks The3DStudio.com
Feb. 8: Autodesk withdraws threat!
JCrew steals JKrew and won't give it back
Jan. 25: J Crew relinquishes JKrew.com!
Fox Agency destroys Lyrics.ch
Reel.com attacks ReelUniverse.com
LA City Attorney attacks LAPD.org
Wall Street Journal attacks Small Street Journal
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DVD Copyright Control Association attacks competing technologies
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Gannett attacks SpaceNews.org
ToysRUs attacks Roadkills-R-Us
Ford Motor Co. attacks BlueOvalNews.com
E-Stamp attacks EStamps
Hasbro attacks
Clue Computing
PETA attacks PETA
More links here and here.
See also
The Domain Name Rights Coalition
The Domain Defense Advocate undertakes coordinated letter-writing campaigns to help defend threatened domains--such as theirs was in 1998, by Colgate-Palmolive.
Lawyers: of course these cases are all flimsy and hardly based on law, but see this case and this one too for possible precedent.
See also this article about an attempt to make linking to "illegal" sites illegal.
And another in the "hunh?" category: at least one corporation has gone after an individual for naming a directory with the corporation's trademarked name.... Wait! That's not all! Now someone has been forced to rename a gif!
See also these links for information about SLAPP suits, another kind of flimsy case. And watch out for ICANN's new rules....
