An Online Trademark Case in Detail

Posted in Law by Elliott Back on March 27th, 2005.

If you’ve ever wondered about online Trademark law and domain disputes, read The Taubman Co. Ltd. v. Webfeats & Henry Mishkoff. I’m currently on Act 109 of this court case which ranges from federal to appeals courts over hundreds of pages of documents. As the case builds momentum, the defendent goes from self-representation, to legal hints from a friend, to receiving “friend of the court” briefs from lawyers and associations, to receiving expert legal counsel and witnesses.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 27th, 2005 at 5:41 pm and is tagged with expert legal counsel, taubman co, court briefs, domain disputes, trademark case, self representation, friend of the court, defendent, trademark law, court case, momentum, lawyers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

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Ronald J Riley 3 years ago 1 point
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The Inside Story

For those who do not know me I founded the Professional Inventors Alliance
http:www.PIAUSA.org in 1993, and in 1995 I became one of the key people
driving the creation of the Alliance for American Innovation whose goal was
to stop so called patent reform legislation and to create a voice for
independent inventor interests in Washington, DC. In 1995 I started an
organization to educate independent inventors www.InventorEd.org and
incorporated it as a 501(c)3 non-profit in 1998. My passion is innovation
and First Amendment issues.

As background information it is important to mention that this is the same
Taubman who was convicted in the Sotheby's art auction house scandal.

These is a bit more to this case. I was contacted by a journalist about
Hank Mishkoff because of the role I played in defending Mrs. Tibbets as
detailed on http:www.Skippy-SCAM.org. At this point Mr. Hank Mishkoff was
defending himself and not fairing too well. Taubman had prevailed in
getting an order shutting down the fan web site and Mr. Mishkoff had put up
a sucks web site in response.

The first thing I did was contact Mr. Krass at GIFFORD, KRASS, GROH,
SPRINKLE, ANDERSON & CITKOWSKI of Birmingham, Michigan because I knew him as
a result of his relationship with a personal friend and inventor named Mike
Levine. I suggested to Mr. Krass that suing a fan was very poor judgment
and that they should end this case. He did not respond well, and shortly
after the contact an order was issued shutting down Mr. Mishkof's sucks web
site about Mr. Taubman.

I was outraged by the court's attack on the First Amendment and responded by
creating http:www.Taubman-SUCKS.com, contacting Mr. Mishkoff and suggesting
that he contact Paul Levy with the Public Citizen Litigation Group. Paul
Levy had helped deal with threats of litigation by Edward B. Friedman
http:www.InventorEd.org/caution/friedman/ (Invention Submission
Corporation's attorney http:www.InventorEd.org/caution/isc). I then called
and wrote Paul Levy about the Mishkoff case, pleading that he should step
into the case.

Paul Levy took the case, and he kicked the crap out of Taubman. I have
little doubt that if Paul Levy had not stepped into the case that the
outcome would have been much different.

Ronald J. Riley, Exec. Dir.
1323 West Cook Road.
Grand Blanc, MI 48439
www.InventorEd.org
Direct (810) 597-0195, Off (810) 936-4356

Also President www.PIAUSA.org

And former advisory board president of the Alliance for American Innovation
1995-2002.

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http://www.InventorEd.org