From: Paul Levy <[log in to unmask]> I am pleased to announce that one more court has ruled that the trademark laws allow a consumer critic to erect a web site that criticizes a company and uses the company's trademark as its domain name, without even inclusion of the word "sucks" or some other negative word in the domain name. Judge William Hayes of the US District Court in San Diego dismissed the complaint of Bosley Medical Institute against the web sites established by Michael Kremer at www.bosleymedical.com and www.bosleymedicalviolations.com on two separate and independent grounds - the web sites were completely noncommercial, and nobody who actually reached the web sites could possibly be confused about whether Bosley was their sponsor. An important development on the "non-commercial use" issue was that the court found non-commercial use even though, on one of his web sites, Kremer provided a link to the Google archive of the alt.baldspot newsgroup, on which Google accepts advertising. We have been warning that the law protecting non-commercial web sites of this sort against meritless trademark claims has become so clear that trademark owners risk being held liable for attorney fees when they file such suits. In this case, Bosley had already lost in the UDRP, which found it to be a case of cyberbullying, but nevertheless took Kremer to court, and dragged him through nearly three years of legal proceedings. Moreover, this is a particularly venal plaintiff - we have checked Public Citizen's pioneering "Questionable Doctors" database, which allows consumers to check whether doctors were subjected to medical board discipline in other states as well as their own - and we have found that there is only one doctor in the whole country who has been subjected to discipline in more states that Larry Lee Bosley. Consequently, we have decided that this is an excellent first case to seek an award of attorney fees on behalf of a domain name defendant. For Immediate Release: Contact: Paul Alan Levy (202) 588-1000