Spamming Travel Firm Sues Anti-Spammer

from the more-of-the-same dept

Here's yet another case of a company accused of spamming getting pretty upset when they're called on it. Someone asked a travel company, named cruise.com, to stop sending him spam. They continued to send him spam. He threatened to sue them under Oklahoma spam laws, and featured them on his website. They turned around and sued him for $4 million for defamation and trademark infringement. They might have trouble on both those claims. First, the guy seems to have the spams pretty well documented, including his repeated attempts to opt-out. It's tough to win a defamation claim when the facts alleged are true. Second, the trademark infringement concerns the use of their logo on his website about them -- but, as has been explained numerous times, trademark law is only to protect against confusion, not to give full rights to the trademark. It's quite unlikely that anyone going to this guy's website about how the company was spamming him would confuse the site as one officially sanctioned by the spamming company.

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  1.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    nemo, Mar 17th, 2005 @ 12:46am

    If the spammer's case fails on jurisdiction, the first line of defense, then the VA fed district court will never address the merits.

    Having read the complaint, motions and P&As, I'm inclined to believe it will fail on jurisdictional grounds alone.

    Defendant has no business contact with anyone in VA, has never sought contact, and has never set foot there. That's pretty persuasive that defendant did not purposefully avail himself of benefits of VA law before the suit, the longstanding test for jurisdiction.

    Whether defendant can make the case for Rule 11 sanctions against spammer's shyster is more doubtful though. That's hard, even when the plaintiff's pleading looks hinky.

    But we can always hope. It would be nice to see a spammer's shyster go down hard.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Spammer sues spamee

    identicon
    Joe Roehr, Mar 17th, 2005 @ 6:25am

    While this company can probably tie up this individual in court, surely there are enough computer literate people to deal with this company?

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    Re: Spammer sues spamee

    identicon
    Disgusted in Oklahoma, Mar 17th, 2005 @ 10:28am

    While computer literacy isn't a completely unknown phenomena (even in Oklahoma) computer literate lawmakers seem to be.
    The bottom line, money talks.
    Disgusted in Oklahoma

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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