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Infomercial Companies Never Learn: Another One Suing Site For Negative Reviews
from the or-you-could-just-improve-your-product dept
Greg Beck, from Public Citizen, has written us in the past a few times about bogus trademark lawsuits being brought against online review sites, such as InfomercialScams.com. Back in May there was a case where a company advertising its wares via infomercials sued the site for trademark infringement. Clearly, it was not the trademark use that was the problem (especially since it's difficult to see how that's trademark infringement). It was merely a way to try to get negative reviews (written by third party users of the site) taken offline. A similar case came up this fall when the infamous Video Professor sued 100 anonymous critics on the site, demanding that the owner of InfomercialScams.com turn over their IP addresses.
Beck is now back alerting us to the fact that the Video Professor has withdrawn his subpoena for info from the site, but is still forging ahead with the lawsuit (and is seeking the identity of a user on Wikipedia). However, he also notes that yet another company that advertises via infomercials is now suing InfomercialScams, claiming trademark infringement. Once again, this is clearly not trademark infringement, but an attempt by the company to bully an independent site into taking negative reviews offline. Just imagine if any of these companies put half as much effort into improving their products and services instead of calling the lawyers whenever anyone has anything critical to say about these firms.
Beck is now back alerting us to the fact that the Video Professor has withdrawn his subpoena for info from the site, but is still forging ahead with the lawsuit (and is seeking the identity of a user on Wikipedia). However, he also notes that yet another company that advertises via infomercials is now suing InfomercialScams, claiming trademark infringement. Once again, this is clearly not trademark infringement, but an attempt by the company to bully an independent site into taking negative reviews offline. Just imagine if any of these companies put half as much effort into improving their products and services instead of calling the lawyers whenever anyone has anything critical to say about these firms.
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Trademark
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Go ahead and sue me Video Professor or suck my u k
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Scam Companies
They will never learn until they are assessed fines or penalties for filing these frivolous lawsuits.
Not one of these lawsuits have had any merit and they are grasping at straws or hoping the website can't afford to fight them back. Too bad for them that Public Citizen has taken on all of infomercialscams.com lawsuits pro bono.
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Re: Scam Companies
And, there are few things that I find more humorous.
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The More It's Hyped.......
For example: NordicTrack, Bowflex, and you can probably think of a dozen more. All suck.
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Video Professor rip-off ?
Video Professor
no refund
Video Professor
scam
Video Professor
lawsuit
Video Professor
law suit
Video Professor
sued
Video Professor
rip-off
Video Professor
ripoff
Video Professor
Does that mean we get free software too?
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Video Professor is for morons
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Video Professor
1st Dumb Move: Trying to force a blog site to give up personal information on its users. Most sites store that allow users to create accounts with them have some type of user confidentiality agreement, so I expect a long hard uphill fight for Mr. Video Professor.
2nd Dumb Move: Even if the sites give up their information, how credible is it? How many individuals use an online alias and fill out online forms with bogus info?
3rd Dumb Move: Lets say they do find enough to narrow it down (say Video Professor sues by IP), now they have the long uphill battle to prove who was actually using the computer and submitted the post.
4rd Dumb Move: Lets say the planets were in alignment and Video doctor gets enough info to take an individual to court. He's fighting an extremely controversial issue. People generally are very protective of the first amendment. Anything that even comes close to infringing on amendment will be met with strong resistance (unless its 'masked' as for 'our protection-- ie: the Patriot Act WTF???)...
Just my 2 cents...
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Re: Video Professor is for morons
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Re: Scam Companies
You also have to keep in mind that people were mad when they wrote these things. Look past the emotion and look into the problems and figure out if these are livable for you or not (and most problems are livable, because you live with TOTALLY CRAPPY cell phone service, yet you've been conditioned to accept it because "that's the way it is").
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CCTV
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lol
Snuggie
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infomercials
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