DirectBuy v. Leonard [1]

On September 21, 2007, DirectBuy, a company that apparently helps customers to buy furniture directly from manufacturers, sent a cease-and-desist letter [5] to Leonard through its lawyers, Dozier Internet Law, P.C. [6] The letter claims that Leonard and his users had defamed the company by referring to its direct-buy plan as a "scam" and a "nightmare." It threatens a lawsuit unless Leonard removes "all defamatory and disparaging statements" about DirectBuy from his websites and compensates the company for its attorneys fees and costs. Most interestingly, the letter ends with an assertion of copyright on behalf of the law firm:

Please be aware that this letter is copyrighted by our law firm, and you are not authorized to republish this is any manner. Use of this letter in a posting, in full or in part, will subject you to further legal causes of action.

Public Citizen Litigation Group [7] got involved on behalf of Leonard. Lawyers for the group not only posted [8] the Dozier firm's letter, but sent a powerful (yet cheeky) response [9] entitled "How not to write a cease and desist letter -- an open letter in response to your September 21 threat." The response not only disputes DirectBuy's defamation claim and its expansive reading of the important recent CDA 230 case, Fair Housing Council v. Roommate.com [10], 489 F.3d 921 (9th Cir. 2007), but also takes the Dozier firm to task for its copyright warning, calling it "the worst thing about your letter". The Public Citizen lawyer continued:

Such a posting [of the letter] would be fair use. Moreover, inquiry by my colleague Greg Beck produced the interesting information that the copyright in the letter has not been registered. Sadly, according to what you told him, you have been successful in this intimidation because none of your cease and desist letters has ever been posted.

There is always a first time. We are posting the letter on the Public Citizen web site (the letter can be found at http://www.citizen.org/documents/directbuycd.pdf [5]) so the public can assess our differences by comparing your contentions with our responses. By this letter, we are inviting you to test the validity of your theory that a writer of a cease and desist letter can avoid public scrutiny by threatening to file a copyright law suit if his letter is disclosed publicly on the Internet.

There appears to have been no developments after Public Citizen's response letter.