Jones Day Law Firm Sues Internet Site

Here is another case bloggers and websites will be watching closely.

The law firm of Jones Day is upset that a realty-based website, Block Shoppers, has linked to their website without permission.

Block Shoppers posts information about real estate transactions that are easily obtainable through simple Internet searches. I wonder if the asshats at Jones Day will be suing Al Gore? After all he did invent the Internet.

Anyway, after listing the condo purchases of two Jones Day attorneys, Block Shoppers was told by the high-priced ambulance cha$ers that they better remove the link and they better stop writing about any attorneys in their firm. Furthermore, Jones Day told Block Shoppers - so the firm does not pursue this in court, a check in the amount of $10,000 should be enough to forget this perceived transgression.

The boneheaded barristers began their goose-stepping, Nazi-like suppression of free speech and filed suit against Block Shoppers after the site refused to be extorted by the jugheads at Jones Day.

Seeing that the pain in the rear - Free Speech - thing might come into play the litigating leeches are trying to hang the suit on an intellectually vacuous argument of infringement.

From the PD --

BlockShopper founder Brian Timpone said the company rejected a Jones Day offer to drop the claim if BlockShopper paid $10,000 and stopped writing about property transactions by Jones Day lawyers. Timpone said that would mean abandoning constitutional rights and undercutting BlockShopper's business model.

The lawsuit says BlockShopper creates the false impression that Jones Day is affiliated with the real estate site. It claims the use of Jones Day's name "is likely to deceive and cause confusion and mistake among customers."

Jones Day also raises an argument for "dilution," a term in intellectual property law that can mean a trademark has been "blurred ... creating noise around a mark that lessens its ability to function," said Jacqueline Lipton, who specializes in Internet law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. More...

It should be noted - in the online article the panty waists at the PD have a link to BlockShopper but not JONES DAY.