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Atlanta IP lawyer Sanford Asman isn't happy that CaseRails CEO Erik Dykema won't hand his company's name over to him—in fact, he's filed a trademark lawsuit over it, just as he said he would last month.
Asman believes that CaseRails is infringing his trademark rights to CaseWebs and CaseSpace, two websites that house his own litigation-management software. In fact, Asman believes any Web-based legal software with "case" in its name should be under his purview.
But even worse than having "Case" in his company's name, Dykema made the mistake of daring to discuss the ordeal with Ars Technica. And to Asman, the interview was pure defamation.
In an amended complaint (PDF), Asman maintains Ars' May 22 story about his case led to "numerous (unsuccessful) attempts to infiltrate" his websites, casewebs.com and casespace.com. And there's more:
Defendants Dykema, Zeller, and CaseRails... encouraged that website to publish derogatory comments as to Asman, and such publication did, in fact, take place, whereby, inter alia, (1) Asman was referred to as "Ass man"; (2) one of the readers of the blog apparently registered the domain "sanfordasman.com" and is using it to link to another website (namely, "The Scuzz Feed" which appears under the url, "sanfordasman.com") that Asman does not sponsor or endorse.
Writing "Ass Man" in a comment section isn't just mean talk on the Internet—to Asman, it's legally actionable defamation, and his lawsuit wants Dykema and CaseRails co-founder Kyle Zeller to pay.
Original Submission
[Editor's Comment: This looks like the second Atlanta-based IP lawyer to sue/to have sued EFF - the previous we reported here .]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by gman003 on Tuesday June 09 2015, @03:14AM
CaseSpace [uspto.gov] filed July 10 2008
CaseWebs [uspto.gov] filed February 6 2007
CaseRails [uspto.gov] filed May 5 2015
They do appear to be in the same Goods & Service category ("Electronic storage of files and documents"), but I personally feel that general file storage is a distinct market versus legal document storage. Nobody in their right mind would use one in place of the other. However, I can see an argument for claiming infringement. I don't agree with it, but I at least see the argument there.
What I do not see any argument for is claiming that an insulting pun is in any way legally actionable. There are very few, very rigidly-defined exceptions to freedom of speech. It's not incitement, it's not a threat, it's not obscenity, it's not defamation (it makes no specific claims that could be considered defamatory), it was not commercial speech in any way, and it had *better* not be a state secret. It wouldn't even count as "fighting words", and the courts have been backtracking on that one since 1942. Even linking his name to a crappy news site doesn't count as any of those, unless there was something defamatory there that I missed.
Also, is he going to sue over Case File XPress [uspto.gov]? They've got precedence on the whole "legal documents on a computer" field by three years, and their trademark is pretty close to his. Maybe we should give them a heads-up - if a similar trademark in a different field is fair game, then a somewhat-similar trademark in a much closer field should be as well.
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Tuesday June 09 2015, @03:17AM
Dammit, apparently you can't permalink to TESS pages (or at least, I can't figure out how to). Didn't notice it until I'd closed the session, which was after I tested the links. Sorry.