Despite the uniform reaction of courts, trademark holders insist on filing lawsuits over gripe-sites. As discussed here in the past, websites that are created for the sole reason of complaining about a service or product, and which incorporate a trademark in doing so, are not guilty of trademark infringement. In Devere Group GMBH v. Opinion Corp. d/b/a Pissedconsumer.com, pissedconsumer.com was sued by a Swiss consulting company because the site hosted a number of sub-domains that hosted public complaints about the company. The company sought damages for trademark infringement, among other claims.
Although the court determined that the consulting company had established its trademark, it had failed to establish any infringement by the gripe-site. The court agreed with the gripe-site that no reasonable consumer, “‘even the dimmest Internet user'” would believe that the comments posted to the gripe-site were sponsored by the consulting company. This was especially true here, where the complaints could never be seen as an endorsement of the services protected by the trademark or endorsed by the company, and the gripe-site did not compete with the company’s website for viewers.
For the most part, the court’s outcome should be the same for a complaint website that was less obvious in identifying its purpose. The line is crossed, however, where the complaint website has a commercial purpose or seeks to benefit from the protected trademark. In that case, judges look at the relationship with a more critical eye, to understand the purpose of the complaint website, and are more reluctant to dismiss an infringement complaint.