Lowes Tries To Silence Sucks Site For Complaints About Lowes

from the did-someone-call-Streisand's-name? dept

We've covered a variety of cases involving so-called "sucks sites," where someone registers as a domain name the name of a company and appends sucks to the end in order to create a complaint site. Companies have often complained that these sites are trademark violations, but that usually doesn't pass the moron in a hurry test. The latest such case involves home improvement store Lowes. A guy who bought a fence from them was upset that the installers botched the job. Lowes refused to take responsibility, so he set up a site at Lowes-Sucks.com and promptly received a cease and desist from the company claiming trademark violation. While early on, a few companies were able to get sucks sites shut down, it's become a lot rarer, as judges tend to recognize that criticism is perfectly legitimate -- and no one is likely to confuse a sucks site as being endorsed by the company. In the meantime, of course, in sending out such a cease and desist, Lowes has just drawn a lot more attention to the fact that they won't take responsibility for the botched fence install. Wouldn't it have just been better for business to fix the damn fence?

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