Public Citizen Sues Dozier Over Failure To Serve Ronald J. Riley

from the this-just-gets-better-and-better dept

We've written a couple times about lawyer John Dozier's highly questionable case against Ronald J. Riley. As I've pointed out, even though I disagree with Riley on almost everything, and find that he regularly insults me and my family, Dozier's lawsuit seems highly suspect. Most of the "lawsuit" is just a personal attack on Riley. And while it's slightly ironic to see an attack on him that's so similar to the attacks Riley does on others, it's difficult to see what that has to do with the actual lawsuit, which simply accuses Riley of violating Dozier's trademarks by hosting some websites that make fun of Dozier (in an over-the-top manner). Dozier seems to be accusing Riley of trademark infringement because he did some search engine optimization (SEO) tricks to drive his own, anti-Dozier sites, up in Google. But SEO isn't illegal. Nor are most of the things Dozier mentions Riley has done in the lawsuit.

In fact, others have pointed out that Dozier seems to be using the lawsuit not as an actual lawsuit but as a way to defame Riley without recourse. That would explain why Dozier has been promoting the lawsuit everywhere, highlighting all of the negative statements about Riley, while failing to respond to everyone pointing out that the actual lawsuit is focused on trademark issues and seems baseless. The entire focus of the lawsuit seems to be to trash Riley over many things that have nothing to do with the questionable trademark claim. To add more fuel to the fire, it now appears that while Dozier is promoting the attack on Riley everywhere... he's failed to actual serve Riley.

Paul Alan Levy from the group Public Citizen finds this highly distasteful and abusive, to the point that Public Citizen has now filed suit against Dozier for his tactics in this case, telling us:

Although we certainly understand why Ronald Riley arouses some pretty strong feelings around the community, we see no basis for Dozier's trademark claims. It is particularly interesting that Dozier filed a lawsuit, and has extensively publicized the lawsuit, and has used it as the basis for takedown letters to Riley's ISP's, but he has never served the lawsuit on Riley. It is as if he wants there to be a lawsuit out there but does not want to get it decided. So, we have filed suit on Riley's behalf against Dozier, asking for a declaratory judgment of non-infringement.

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RNC Backs Down On Threats Over T-Shirts With Its Logo

from the an-elephant-never-forgets,-but-sometimes-it-misuses-trademark-law dept

Paul Alan Levy writes in to let us know that following widespread press coverage of his challenge to the Republican National Committee to back down from suing CafePress over t-shirts that use the term "GOP" or show the RNC's elephant logo, that the RNC has in fact agreed to back down. It won't be suing CafePress or users, and will only ask that those who just show the logo or the term apply for a free license (though, it's unclear what happens if that license request is turned down). However, in following this story, Levy discovered that the RNC had also been threatening some individual sellers, especially on t-shirts that are critical of the RNC. Levy and Public Citizen have called on the RNC to withdraw the threatening letters, and warns the RNC that it may sue for declaratory relief (basically get a judge to say the t-shirts are perfectly legal) if the RNC does not withdraw the letters.

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Various Rights Group Fight Back Against The Wikileaks Injunction

from the standing-up-for-freedom-of-speech dept

Last week, the decision by a California court to have a registrar attempt to force Wikileaks offline got plenty of attention -- not the least of which was because the injunction had no impact on the site's IP address: 88.80.13.160. Yet, much more troubling were the implications concerning why a judge in California would try to take down an entire site because of complaints from a Swiss bank about just a few documents on the site concerning a lawsuit in Switzerland. Now it appears that plenty of organizations who fight for various civil rights have shown up to file briefs against this questionable ruling.

Paul Alan Levy, of the group, Public Citizen, writes in to let us know: "We at Public Citizen are concerned with the First Amendment and the issue of prior restraint, but in attacking the orders we decided to focus on some more technical issues that neither the lawyers in the case nor, apparently, the judge had noticed. Thus, earlier today, along with the California First Amendment Coalition, we filed a brief pointing out that the case did not even qualify for federal court jurisdiction because there are subjects of foreign states on both sides of the case -- the Swiss bank on one side, and Wikileaks, many of whose members are abroad, on the other side. In addition, we point out that the main cause of action on which the bank relied, section 17200 of the California Business and Professions Code, applies only to unfair or unlawful "business practices" and hence does not apply to completely non-commercial web sites like Wikileaks. Our brief is discussed on the Citizen Vox blog, and in this press release.

A brief attacking the injunction on First Amendment grounds was also filed today by a coalition of media organizations. Finally, the ACLU of Northern California and EFF have also filed a brief arguing against the decision on First Amendment grounds."

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