CDR: No New World Coffee Disparagement Site TRO
Duncan Frissell
frissell at panix.com
Tue Sep 19 11:24:31 PDT 2000
Last Friday in Union County (NJ) Superior Court in Elizabeth, the operator
of www.NewWorldCoffeeFraud.com won a solo victory against three sets of
lawyers when he convinced the judge not to issue a TRO against his
corporate disparagement site.
New World Coffee a NJ-based coffee and bagel franchise company was
represented by
PIPER MARBURY RUDNICK & WOLFE LLP (the Washington DC firm that represented
AOL in its anti-spam litigation), RABINOWITZ, TRENK, LUBETKIN & TULLY (a NJ
firm), as well as New World Coffee's General Counsel.
The company made a series of claims in seeking a TRO including breach of
franchise agreement by franchisees who are supposedly saying unkind things
about it. It is also claiming that the domain names newworldcoffefraud.com
and newworldfraud.com are likely to confuse innocent surfers looking for
coffee (dilution). There was also and Anti-Cybersquatting Act claim.
The judge didn't seem too concerned about the contract claims but was
initially inclined to block the defendant's use of domain names for
dilution and cybersquatting. But once the defendant presented a whois list
of the hundreds of domain names containing the words "new world" (New World
Coffee does not control newworld.com, .org, or .net) she dismissed the
cybersquatting argument. Dilution was thrown out after the defendant
argued that all of the cited cases involved domain names that were
initially confusing versions of trademarks (jews-for-jesus.org,
plannedparenthood.org, etc.) The judge agreed that even the most casual
viewer would not confuse newworldcoffeefraud.com with the trademark
holder's site.
The underlying case is still active and plaintiffs are seeking early
discovery to see if they can uncover the defendant's sources. He is
defending using the NJ shield law for journalists.
Any New Jersey lawyers interested in the case?
DCF
----
"Di-electrical materialism dooms the Ancien Regime, the Treaty of
Westphalia, the Communist International, the whole shooting match"
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/html
Size: 2401 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks-legacy/attachments/20000919/aeb085b5/attachment.txt>
More information about the cypherpunks-legacy
mailing list