Domain name dispute
Bryan Corbin reports in today’s Evansville Curier and Press on a high profile case regarding a somewhat new issue:
The publisher of Evansville Living Magazine has filed a lawsuit against an Internet proprietor, alleging the similar-sounding name of his Web site has confused and misled customers. People who booked vacations to New York on the travel service of the disputed Web site, Evansville Magazine.com, mistakenly believed they were dealing with Evansville Living and called in with complaints when their trips went awry – hurting Evansville Living’s reputation, the plaintiff’s attorney said. The Internet proprietor, Mark Alan Sunderman, acquired the domain name EvansvilleMagazine.com nearly four years ago. Saying he is within his legal rights to operate that site, which he built himself, Sunderman expressed skepticism that anyone could confuse it with Evansville Living’s much more elaborate site.
“I don’t think it was misrepresentative at all. I can’t help that their name is similar to mine,” Sunderman said. Tucker Publishing Group Inc. owns Evansville Living, a bimonthly magazine with articles about people, arts, dining and sports, and also owns its online edition, EvansvilleLiving.com. This month, Tucker Publishing filed suit in Vanderburgh Superior Court against Sunderman and his company, Internet Services International Inc. The suit alleges Sunderman created confusion so as to misrepresent EvansvilleMagazine.com as being EvansvilleLiving.com.
The issue went beyond simple confusion over Web addresses, contended Tucker’s attorney, James D. Johnson. Tucker Publishing fielded complaints from stranded customers of Sunderman’s vacation travel offers who mistakenly believed their trips were being operated by Evansville Living, he said. “People were blaming us for things going wrong on the other company’s trips. It was clear the public was being confused and we felt we had to do something to protect our name,” Johnson said. Tucker Publishing’s suit alleges unfair competition, trademark violations and interference with business relations. Sunderman said that several years ago, he discovered no one had staked claim to some obvious Evansville-related domain names. So he acquired 40 to 50 of them himself – including EvansvilleRestaurants.com and EvansvilleChurches.com, believing companies would pay to have their advertisements posted on his Web sites.
The Courier and Press offers the complaint in pdf form here. [Disclaimer: The firm representing Tucker Publishing is my past and future employer. However, I have had no involvement with the case.]
