Why don’t big firms get it?
Chadbourne & Parke is the latest firm to send a pompous, overbearing, and fundamentally misguided cease-and-desist to a website operator. Firm client Goldman Sachs apparently isn’t happy about the obvious parody site Goldman Sachs 666.
No one would have heard of the site had Chadbourne’s John Squires (Bucknell BS ’84, Pittsburgh JD ’92) not sent the letter. Now, sites all over the interwebs are giving GS666 plenty of free link love. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
More on Squires, who should have known better, and the site operator, who has been through this before, after the jump.
Squires is co-chair of Chadbourne’s intellectual property practice and “has significant, internationally hailed experience in IP matters.” Somehow he has managed to avoid reading any of the so-and-so-sucks.com cases. Pick a company – Ford and Lucent are two notable examples – and it has been through this before and has been benchslapped for this same overreaching behavior. I’m not going to do a ton of research on this, so here’s some dicta from Lucent Technology v. Lucentsucks.com, 95 F.Supp.2d 258 (E.D. Va. 2000):
The likelihood of confusion is a key element when determining whether trademark infringement or dilution has occurred. Petro Stopping Centers, L.P. v. James River Petroleum, Inc., 130 F.3d 88, 91 (4th Cir. 1997) (plaintiff must show that it has a valid trademark and that the defendant’s reproduction, counterfeit, copy, or colorable limitation of it creates a likelihood of confusion). The Fourth Circuit has acknowledged that effective parody “diminishes any risk of consumer confusion,” and can therefore not give rise to a cause of action under the Trademark Act. Anheuser-Busch, Inc. v. L&L Wings, Inc., 962 F.2d 316, 321 (4th Cir. 1992). Defendant argues persuasively that the average consumer would not confuse lucentsucks.com with a web site sponsored by plaintiff.
Here’s the GoldmanSachs666.com disclaimer, by the way:
This website has NOT been approved by Goldman Sachs, nor does this website have any affiliation with Goldman Sachs. This website was designed to provide information about Goldman Sachs direct from the public, and NOT from Goldman Sachs’s marketing and public relations departments. You may find the official Goldman Sachs website at www.GoldmanSachs.com
Any chance that’s going to create a likelihood of confusion with the bank that just “crushed” expectations with its first-quarter earnings? This is the kind of crap that should be nipped in the bud by lawyers providing some thoughtful counsel instead of just reading the rule and cranking out the form letter. This is the same problem we had with Loeb & Loeb harassing Fake Chuck Westfall, and it’s the same kind of bad advice that drove us crazy with Patrick Shea of Paul Hastings on the AIG Financial Products bonuses.
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