One year after etoy was carried to victory against
eToys, we would like to help focus more attention on some other cases, many
of them worse than the eToys case, all of them just as flimsy and as shamelessly
flawed.
Without public pressure, none of these cases will be resolved except in
court--if the defendants can muster the financial and psychological strength to keep their identities alive. And that's a very big if.
Chocolate giant Ferrero ("Kinder Surprise eggs") attacks Austrian charity Kinder.at
Warner Brothers attacks harrypotterguide.co.uk (see also Potterwar!; other sites coming)
HMO Health Net attacks HealthNet.org
New World Coffee tries but fails to silence its critics
British Airports Association goes after baa.com
In Germany, a leech attacks everyone
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DVD Copyright Control Association attacks competing technologies
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PlanSoft.com attacks PlanSuck.com
Leonardo Finance attacks Leonardo magazine
Blueyonder.co.uk sort of accidentally attacks Blueyonder.com--then decides they really want it
A little gallery attacks its own art piece
Nissan attacks Mr. Nissan
Mattel attacks Matt Lavallee (Matt L.)
The parents of Jean-Michel Basquiat destroy a site about their son
CBS News attacks Evolution Control Committee
KidStyle attacks KidStyle-NYC
Volkswagen (of slave-labor fame) destroys ISP VW.net
JVISION weirdness
American Airlines attacks Ashcraft
Aetna Insurance succesfully closes down AetnaInsurance.com (a website critical of them)
Aetna U.S. Health Care succesfully closes down AetnaUSHealthCare.com (a website critical of them)
Mattel makes some crazy pseudo-random threats
Coca Cola attacks some senior citizens (site)
Feb. 9: Coca-Cola sees the light (and the spotlight in their future)
A peanut butter giant attacks a 75-year-old cartoon
(info here and here)
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Autodesk, Inc. attacks The3DStudio.com
Feb. 8: Autodesk withdraws threat!
JCrew steals JKrew and won't give it back
Jan. 25: J Crew relinquishes JKrew.com!
Fox Agency destroys Lyrics.ch
Reel.com attacks ReelUniverse.com
LA City Attorney attacks LAPD.org
Wall Street Journal attacks Small Street Journal
Gannett attacks SpaceNews.org
ToysRUs attacks Roadkills-R-Us
Ford Motor Co. attacks BlueOvalNews.com
E-Stamp attacks EStamps
Hasbro attacks
Clue Computing
The Holy See swipes vaticano.org
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PETA attacks PETA
More links here and here.
See also
The Domain Name Rights Coalition
The Domain Defense Advocate undertakes coordinated letter-writing campaigns to help defend threatened domains--such as theirs was in 1998, by Colgate-Palmolive.
Lawyers: of course these cases are all flimsy and hardly based on law, but see this case and this one too for possible precedent.
See also this article about an attempt to make linking to "illegal" sites illegal.
And another in the "hunh?" category: at least one corporation has gone after an individual for naming a directory with the corporation's trademarked name.... Wait! That's not all! Now someone has been forced to rename a gif!
See also these links for information about SLAPP suits, another kind of flimsy case. And watch out for ICANN's new rules....
And see also the Yahoo list of domain name controversies.