Unusual full page ad in today’s Wall Street Journal consisting of ‘open letter’ written by CEO of TRUE.COM, to Barry Diller, head of rival dating website MATCH.COM.  Match.com subpoenaed 6 former employees who now work for True.com, for depositions regarding possible trade secret theft.  Turning the tables, True.com asks “what is it exactly that you are trying to keep secret, Mr. Diller?”

Well, if Mr. Diller said, then it wouldn’t be a valuable trade secret anymore.

Further proof of the old adage, don’t do anything you wouldn’t want to see as the subject of a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal.

True.com press release here.

Oddly, www.thedatinggame.com and www.datinggame.com point to a Sony.com site for PlayStation.

Further illustration of proposition that one (in this case two) may not use one’s own name if to do so would cause confusion.  Suisman has a dispute with his firm, SUISMAN, SHAPIRO, WOOL, BRENNAN, GRAY & GREENBERG (known as SUISMAN SHAPIRO), leaves, and hooks up with Shapiro to form SUISMAN & SHAPIRO.  Relying on evidence of bad faith (Suisman threatened to find someone named WOOL, as well), the court enjoined Suisman and Shapiro from using a firm name in the form Suisman & Shapiro.

This NY Lawyer article reports that the Judge articulated dicta that will trouble name partners thinking of moving practices, in that the name of the firm had acquired secondary meaning to describe the firm.

Your state bar is the starting point for researching the ‘letterhead’ rules governing your firm.

AMERICA’S FAVORITE PASTA is non-falsifiable puffery, not a falsifiable claim subject to false advertising (and the Court doesn’t need survey evidence to make that finding).  Last line of decision: the Lanham Act protects against misleading statements, not misunderstood ones.

American Italian Pasta Company v. New World Pasta Company, No. 03-2065 (8th Cir.  June 7, 2004)

Although Registrant of domain name did lose this UDRP as he was found to have acted in bad faith (having been a former customer of complainant), the decision is noteworthy as it finds that registrant’s use of proxy service to keep contact info private, in and of itself is not evidence of bad faith, given that there are good faith reasons for wanting to keep one’s whois data private.  The panel appears to give weight to what I am told by complainant’s counsel is the erroneous fact that registrant’s true identity was easily ascertainable.

CyBerCorp Holding v. Allman, (NAF May 14, 2004)

See also  Porsche v. Domains By Proxy (WIPO May 2003) (Proxy service shares mal fides of respondent).