Union Square Partnership v. Durkee [1]

In July 2008, Union Square Partnership (USP), the nonprofit business improvement district [2] for New York's Union Square neighborhood, sued Savitri Durkee for copyright infringement in New York federal court after she created a website that parodied the official USP website [3].  (Durkee is an activist who wants to preserve Union Square as a public gathering place and prevent it from being commercialized.)  In August 2008, USP also filed an administrative complaint with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) [4], seeking to have the parody site's domain names (www.unionsquarepartnership.com and www.unionsquarepartnership.org) transferred to it.

Durkee failed to respond to the WIPO proceeding in a timely manner, and on October 22, 2008, the WIPO arbitration panel ordered that her site's domain names be transferred to USP.  On November 18, Durkee filed an answer and counterclaims in the federal court action, seeking a declaration that her domain names did not infringe USP's trademark or constitute cybersquatting.  Durkee also claimed that fair use excused any copyright infringement and that USP's lawsuit violated New York's anti-SLAPP laws [5].

The parties settled in January 2009.  Durkee agreed to transfer the domain names www.unionsquarepartnership.org and www.unionsquarepartnership.com to USP and to include a disclaimer on her site stating that the site is not affiliated with USP.   The parties also set out certain domain names that Durkee could not attempt to register or use.  Durkee now operates her new website at www.unionsquarepartnershipsucks.org [6].