Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Consumer Law Blogs -> CL&P Blog

Consumer Law

: CL&P Blog

Jenzabar Loses Attempt to Suppress Critical Web Site Through Abusive Trademark Claim

By Paul Levy

by Paul Alan Levy

In a ruling this week, a Massachusetts trial judge upheld the free speech rights of a documentary filmmaking company against an effort by a Massachusetts software company to use trademark litigation to punish the filmmakers for the portrayal of one of the student leaders in the Tiananmen square protests. 

The case involves a software company, Jenzabar, that was founded by Ling Chai, one of the student leaders at the Tiananmen Square protests.  Long Bow Group created a documentary that included an interview, during the protests but before the tanks rolled in to crush the protests, in which Chai indicated that she was actually hoping for bloodshed because only then would the Chinese people open their eyes to the nature of the Communist regime.  The documentarists then established a web site about the subject of the film.   Rather than sue for defamation over the film itself, however, Chai, her husband, and the software company that they founded filed a defamation action over the republication of unfavorable newspaper articles about their company.  And, when those claims were dismissed, Jenzabar pursued trademark claims, complaining that the web pages about Jenzabar included the company?s name in the meta tags for those web pages, and that the web site therefore showed up in search engine results when the company?s name was used as a search term

Sidestepping the fact that neither Google nor other search engines rely on keyword meta tags,  Massachusetts Superior Court Judge John Cratsley has granted summary judgment on the ground that there was no evidence supporting the claim that any reasonable Internet user might be confused about whether Jenzabar was the sponsor of Long Bow?s web site.  The court squarely rejected Jenzabar?s claim based on initial interest confusion, noting that a Google search for ?Jenzabar? would turn up multiple results for Jenzabar?s own web pages that users interested in Jenzabar?s own web site could follow.  In the event an Internet user clicked through into Long Bow?s critical web pages, and did not want to be there, she could easily go back to the search list and find a different web page about Jenzabar.

The timing of the court?s rejection of Chai?s attack on her critics? free speech could not be more ironic.  Chai is in Norway to attend the award of the Nobel Peace prize to fellow Tiananmen Square protest leader Liu Xiaobo.

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on December 10, 2010 (boomark / email).