Tag: gripe sites

February 20, 2015 Anonymity, Defamation

Complaint site does not have to identify its users

Petitioner filed an action in New York state court seeking to compel PissedConsumer.com to disclose the identity of the person or persons who posted certain statements to the site. These statements criticized petitioner for allegedly failing to fulfill an advertising promise to give the user a $500 gas card. The anonymous user went on to complain that petitioner “will forget about you and … all the promises they made to you” once “you sign on the dotted line.”

The trial court denied the petition to compel PissedConsumer.com to turn over the names of its users. Petitioner sought review with the Appellate Division. On appeal, the court affirmed.

It held that the lower court properly denied the petition since petitioner failed to demonstrate that it had a meritorious cause of action as required to obtain pre-action discovery:

Nothing in the petition identifies specific facts that are false and when the statements complained of are viewed in context, they suggest to a reasonable reader that the writer was a dissatisfied customer who utilized respondent’s consumers’ grievance website to express an opinion. Although some of the statements are based on undisclosed, unfavorable facts known to the writer, the disgruntled tone, anonymous posting, and predominant use of statements that cannot be definitively proven true or false, supports the finding that the challenged statements are only susceptible of a non-defamatory meaning, grounded in opinion.

The court seemed to recognize the importance of anonymous speech, and that one must not lightly cast aside its protections. If you’re going to go after an online critic, best have a cause of action that you can actually plead.

Woodbridge Structured Funding, LLC v. Pissed Consumer, — N.Y.S.2d —, 2015 WL 686383, (February 19, 2015)

Evan Brown is an attorney in Chicago helping clients with technology, intellectual property and new media issues.

December 20, 2011 Trademarks, Unfair Competition

Use of trademark in gripe site subdomain was not likely to cause confusion

Ascentive, LLC v. Opinion Corp., 2001 WL 6181452 (E.D.N.Y. December 13, 2011)

Plaintiffs sued gripe site pissedconsumer.com for trademark infringement and other forms of unfair competition. The court denied plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction. It found, among other things, that defendants’ use of plaintiffs’ trademarks as subdomains (e.g., ascentive.pissedconsumer.com) was not likely to cause confusion.

The court looked to other cases where gripe site operators chose negative words to use in conjunction with the company being criticized. Over the years, gripe site operators have commonly chosen to add the word “sucks” to the target brand. For example, in Taubman Co. v. Webfeats, 319 F.3d 770 (6th Cir. 2003), the court held there was no trademark violation by the site taubmansucks.com.

Other “suck” parts of the URL have risen above the trademark infringement fray. A case from over a decade ago found that the web address compupix.com/ballysucks would not create a likelihood of confusion because no reasonable visitor to the site would assume it to come from the same source or think it to be affiliated with, connected with, or sponsored by Bally’s. Bally Total Fitness v. Faber, 29 F.Supp.2d 1161 (C.D. Cal. 1998).

And it’s not just that these brands purport to suck. In Taylor Building Corp. v. Benfield, 507 F.Supp.2d 832 (S.D. Ohio 2007), the court found that taylorhomesripoff.com, used in connection with a forum for criticizing plaintiff, did not create any likelihood of confusion.

In this case, the notion of being “pissed” joins a lexicon of permissible gripe site nomenclature (depending on the circumstances, of course). So says the court: “Like the word ‘sucks,’ the word ‘pissed’ has entered the vernacular as a word instinct with criticism and negativity. Thus, no reasonable visitor to the [offending pages] would assume the sites to be affiliated with [plaintiffs], and PissedConsumer’s use of plaintiffs’ marks in the various domain names at issue is not likely to cause confusion as to source.”

Aside: Good lawyering by my friend Ron Coleman for the defendants in this case.

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