Alvis Coatings, Inc. v. Does [1]

Alvis Coatings sells coating products, including "Alvis Spray-on Siding". The company filed a John Doe lawsuit in 2004 in North Carolina federal court against ten anonymous defendants, alleging that certain anonymous postings about its products violated the Lanham Act and North Carolina state laws prohibiting unfair and deceptive trade practices, unfair competition and defamation.

According to court documents, Alvis alleged that, in 2003, internet user(s) posted sixteen messages on home improvement message boards, including bobvila.com [2] and oldhouse.com [3], about Alvis's products. The unknown poster(s) allegedly commented that Alvis Spray-on Siding was "Duron's siding in a can, privately labelled by Alvis" and that Alvis's officers and dealers were "criminals."

After filing suit, Alvis successfully obtained an order to conduct limited and expedited discovery and thereby obtained from the operators of bobvila.com [2] and oldhouse.com [3] the identity of two relevant ISPs, Roadrunner and Comcast.

When subpoeanaed by Alvis, Comcast refused to provide Alvis with information identifying its customer, and the anonymous poster, under the John Doe moniker, filed a motion to quash the subpoena. He claimed that the subpoena threatened his First Amendent right to anonymous speech.

On December 2, 2004, the Court denied the defendant's motion to quash, applying the "prima facie" standard from Doe v. 2TheMart.com, 140 F. Supp.2d 1088 (W.D. Wash. 2001) [4] (holding that the plaintiff is entitled to discover the defendant's identity when it can establish a prima facie case against him). The Court held that Alvis was entitled under this standard to compell Comcast to produce information relating to the Doe defendants' identity.

Update:

2/28/06 - Court dismissed the case due to plaintiffs' failure to prosecute the case.