U.S. Chamber of Commerce v. Yes Men [1]

In October 2009, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sued a group of political activists including members of the Yes Men [2] and the Action Factory [3] for trademark infringement and other claims in federal district court in the District of Columbia.

The dispute arose when the Yes Men issued a fake press release and held a fake press conference at the National Press Club in which the Chamber of Commerce ostensibly reversed its position and promised to stop lobbying against strong climate change legislation. After the fake press conference began, a real representative of the Chamber of Commerce interrupted and revealed that the Chamber had not in fact reversed its position.  As part of the hoax, the Yes Men published a parody website designed to look like the Chamber's, which featured a fake statement by CEO Thomas J. Donahue about the supposed change of policy.

The Chamber first sent a DMCA takedown notice [4] to the Yes Men's upstream service provider demanding that the parody website be taken down.  According to EFF [5], this resulted in the temporary shutdown of not only the spoof site but of hundreds of other sites [6] hosted by May First/People Link [7].  The Yes Men retained EFF as counsel, and EFF responded [8] to the Chamber on their behalf, disputing the validity of the copyright claim, requesting that the Chamber withdraw its letter, and threatening a DMCA action for knowing, material misrepresentation of a copyright claim under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f).  Despite the takedown notice, the parody site remained available for a time, but now no longer appears to be online.

The Chamber then filed its lawsuit in federal court, abandoning the copyright claim but asserting trademark infringement, trademark dilution, cybersquatting, false advertising and other claims.  On January 5, 2010, the Yes Men and Action Factory defendants filed a motion to dismiss [9] the complaint and a motion to stay discovery [10]. The motion to dismiss argues that the Chamber's lawsuit is designed to punish core political speech, rather than to vindicate any actual trademark harm, and should therefore be dismissed.