Lucas Nursery & Landscaping v. Grosse [1]

When she was dissatisfied with landscaping work performed at her home by Lucas Nursery & Landscaping, Michelle Grosse registered the domain name, www.lucasnursery.com [2]. Grosse posted photographs of her yard and warned other consumers about doing business with Lucas Nursery. Lucas Nursery filed a lawsuit against Grosse in federal court in Michigan, claiming that her use of the company's name in her domain name violated the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA).

(Under the ACPA, a person is liable if he or she registers or uses a
domain name that is "identical or confusingly similar" to another's trademark
with the "bad faith intent to profit from that mark.")

The district court granted summary judgment for Grosse, ruling that Grosse did not have a bad faith intent to profit from Lucas Nursery's name. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, emphasizing that Grosse created the website to inform consumers about the practices of a landscaping company that she believed had performed inferior work on her yard, not to profit from use of the company's mark.