Jan Kruska sued several anti-pedophile organizations, including Perverted Justice Foundation, Inc. ("PJFI"), and individuals affliliated with those organizations, as well as domain registrar GoDaddy.com and social networking site MySpace.com, after the organizations accused Kruska of being a predator, a pedophile, and pro-pedophile on various websites, including JanKruska.com and JanKruska.net. Kruska sued for defamation, copyright infringement, cyberstalking and harassment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations ("RICO") Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") in Arizona federal court.

In August 2007, self-described journalist Kruska began to receive what she described as "venomous" emails after she criticized the overbreadth of anti-pedophile laws. Soon after, the Absolute Zero United blog and PJFI's Wikisposure and Corporate Sex Offender websites posted accusations that Kruska was a convicted child molester and a pedophile, according to the complaint. The defendants allegedly posted similar accusations on MySpace.com, as well as on websitesJanKruska.com and JanKruska.net, both of which were registered byFilmax.com through GoDaddy.com. Some of the websites also allegedly posted personal information about Kruska, including her address, and photographs of Kruska that she says are copyrighted. In addition, Barbara Ochoa, aka Petra Luna, allegedly organized a protest targeting publishers of Kruska's writing, which Kruska said resulted in her articles being taken down. Further, Ochoa allegedly emailed Kruska, demanding Kruska remove her "entire web presence" or else face a "full scale activist attack" against her.

Kruska filed her complaint in January 2008. It sought damages and a preliminary injunction, barring thedefendants from "disseminating claims that [Kruska] is a 'Predator', 'Child Molester', 'Child Abuser', 'Pedophile', and 'Pro-Pedophile' bypostings on the internet, mass mailings, e-mails to friends, relatives,employers, business associates, among others; or otherwise by any othermeans making such suggestions."

In response, GoDaddy.com, Ochoa, and PJFI all moved to dismiss the case on jurisdictional grounds. In April 2008, Kruska voluntarily dropped her claims against MySpace.com. In June 2008, the court granted Ochoa's motion to dismiss, but gave leave to Kruska to amend her complaint against Ochoa, which she did. In July 2008, the court granted GoDaddy.com's motion to dismiss on the ground that CDA 230 precluded liability. The court also seems to have dismissed trademark claims against GoDaddy on CDA 230 grounds, which Eric Goldman notes is unusual.

Update

6/12/2009 - The court denied  Butler's new motion for summary judgment pending discovery.

8/7/2009 - Kruska moved for summary judgment on her copyright infringement claims against Von Erck and PJF.  She claimed any arguments for fair use failed as a matter of law.

8/28/2009 - Von Erck and PJF answered Kruska's complaint with affirmative defenses including a First Amendment defense, fair use, lack of damages, and a lack of personal jurisdiction.

9/22/2009 - The court denied Brocious' motion to dismiss Kruska's amended complaint.  

10/13/2009 - The court denied Kruska's motion for summary judgment on her copyright claims pending discovery.

11/18/2010 - Court issued order granting in part and denying in part Christopher Brocious' Motion to Dismiss and denying Brocious' Motion for Summary Judgment. 

In February 1998, Bally Total Fitness sued Andrew Faber, a former Bally customer who created a website entitled BallySucks (now defunct), which was dedicated to collecting complaints about Bally's health club business and included modified versions of Bally's trademarks with the word "sucks" across them.  The complaint alleged trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and unfair competition.

Bally moved for a temporary restraining order against Faber to force him to take down the website, but the court denied Bally's motion in April 1998. In October 1998, Bally moved for summary judgment on its claims. The court again rejected the motion, and instead ordered Faber to bring a motion for summary judgment. Faber so moved, and the court granted the motion in December 1998.

The court found that Faber's "Bally sucks" site promoted separate, distinct "goods" from Bally's services and would not confuse reasonable consumers. Further, the court said that even if the two "goods" had been related, the trademark infringement balancing test from AMF Inc. v. Sleekcraft Boats, 599 F.2d 341, 348-49 (9th Cir. 1979) weighed heavily in favor of Faber.

Following the grant of summary judgment, Bally appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. However, on June 13, 2000, the appeal was dismissed by stipulation of the parties.

In January 2008, the Southern California Regional Rail Authority (SCRRA), which operates the regional commuter railway service in southern California known as Metrolink, sent Robert Arkow a cease-and-desist letter regarding Arkow's use of the"Metrolink" trademark in the domain name of his website at "metrolinkrider.com." Arkow, a self-styled consumer advocate, created the website in order to provide a forum for Metrolink users and employees to comment on Metrolink train services and policies.

The letter notified Arkow of the SCRRA's trademark rights in the term "Metrolink" and argued that his use of the mark in the domain name for his website "may infringe upon and/or dilute the strength of [the] mark." The letter asked Arkow to stop using the "Metrolink" mark and gave him four weeks to respond. Arkow responded via email, refusing to discontinue use of the mark and indicating that he had registered another domain name -- "metrolinksucks.com" -- as a fall-back in case the SCRRA initiated legal proceedings over the "metrolinkrider.com" domain.

In March 2008, the SCRRA filed a complaint against Arkow before the World Intellectual Property Organization Arbitration and Mediation Center pursuant to the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). The WIPO panel ultimately dismissed the complaint. For details, see the CMLP database entry, Southern California Regional Rail Authority v. Arkow.

In 2006, Reza Ganjavi, a musician and record producer in the field of classical guitar, filed suit in federal court in California against several named and anonymous Internet posters.  Ganjavi alleged that the individual defendants posted negative comments about him on various websites and Usenet's classical guitar newsgroup and created websites mocking his website.  Ganjavi also alleged that the defendants fraudulently published text purporting to be his work and used his identity to make offensive and threatening statements, including threatening to kill a person, issuing racial slurs, and expressing sympathy for terrorists. 

In Ganjavi's suit in California, the court order dismissing the case without prejudice indicated that all defendants either were dropped from the case by the plaintiff or filed successful motions to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction.

Ganjavi then sued Jeremy and Cindy Smith, Todd Tipton, William Jennings, and Deloitte & Touche in federal court in Illinois over essentially the same facts. Ganjavi named Deloitte & Touche because the company employed Jeremy Smith and he was believed to have made some of the disputed comments from Deloitte's computers (Ganjavi later dropped the company from the suit).

Ganjavi's third amended complaint contained claims for violation of attribution and integrity rights under the Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 106A), "false presentation" in violation of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), false light, appropriation of name and likeness, libel, negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress, unfair competition, and other state law claims.

The defendants moved to dismiss the lawsuit and for summary judgment on various grounds. In July 2007, the district court granted Jeremy Smith's motion to dismiss the complaint for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. With respect to the two federal claims, the court held (1) that Ganjavi's federal copyright claim under § 106A did not survive as a basis for federal jurisdiction because that section only applies to works of visual art under § 101 of the Copyright Act, which do not include electronic publications, and (2) that the ACPA claim did not survive because the complaint did not assert that the defendants had attempted to or intended to profit from the alleged wrongful conduct. The court further found that since Ganjavi had not established the jurisdictional threshold amount for the remaining state law claims, it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction to hear the case.

According to Ganjavi's website, he had planned to refile in state court but reached a settlement agreement with the defendants before doing so. 

In October 2007, Lifestyle Lift Holding, Inc. and its sole shareholder, David Kent, sued Jean Bowler in federal court in Michigan. Bowler runs Ageless Beauty, an informational website on various aspects of beauty, cosmetics, and cosmetic surgery. According to the complaint, Bowler published an article on the website "sometime in 2007," in which she discussed an investigation of Liftestyle Lift's advertising methods by the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau (BBB).

The complaint acknowledged that BBB did in fact investigate the company and its advertising in 2007, but alleged that BBB closed the investigation with a report dated 30,2007, and that Bowler's article mischaracterized the nature of the investigation and falsely implied that it was ongoing after its closure. See Cmplt. 14-15. Lifestyle Lift claimed that Bowler's article constituted false advertising under the Lanham Act, defamation, commercial disparagement, and a violation of the Texas Deceptive Practices-Consumer Protection Act.

The complaint also alleged that Bowler infringed Lifestyle Lift's trademark and engaged in cybersquatting by using "Lifestyle Lift" in a URL for the site and in metadata. (Note: the cybersquatting claim is unprecedented and definitely invalid because Lifestyle Lift did not allege that Bowler registered, trafficked in, or used a domain name containing the words "Lifestyle Lift" or anything like it. The company was evidently confused about the difference between a single URL and the domain name for a website.)

The parties settled in February 2008. The entire terms of the settlement are not public, but Bowler has removed the disputed article from her website.