Startup Threatened Into Settling Over Hyperlinking 333
An anonymous reader writes "A tiny startup that was threatened by a massive law firm over nothing more than a humble hyperlink has been forced to settle and change its linking policies, handing Goliath the win in this gratuitous trademark case. Under the agreement, real estate startup BlockShopper can no longer include hyperlinks anywhere on its website to Jones Day, a massive Chicago law firm, except explicitly on URL text. Essentially, jonesday.com is okay, but not blah blah blah." I wonder if the owners of jonesdaysucks.com feel the same way.
Re:Cue the Streisand effect in 3...2...1... (Score:1, Informative)
concerted effort starting now. stick it in forum signatures if you want. "turtle [jonesday.com] penis [jonesday.com]."
Re:oh yizzo (Score:5, Informative)
Let them know how you feel via their contact page at:
JonesDay's Contact Us page [jonesday.com]
Re:Googlebomb anyone? (Score:3, Informative)
RTFA, it's not about hot linking (Score:5, Informative)
.. the firm presumably wasn't thrilled about having its attorneys' home purchases broadcast [slate.com] ..
The firm's got a point if you ask me.
This is an overkill, but I'm sure they just meant to teach these boneheads a lesson - don't fuck with lawyers.
Re:This just in.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:All those lawyers... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:wtf judge? (Score:5, Informative)
The Honorable John W. Darrah
United States District Court
219 South Dearborn Street
Chicago, IL 60604
Contact: Kathryn E. Bianchetti
Phone: (312) 435-5619
I would expect such behavior from a big law firm, and to some degree it's to be expected if it's a real trademark action, but I'd expect a federal judge to use a little more discretion and not be so blatantly one-sided. This asshole frankly seems to be in Jones-Day's back pocket, and I wouldn't expect anything resembling a fair hearing from him based on his actions to this point.
Yes, Judge Darrah, I just said I believe you're either either incompetent or crooked. You can choose which one you think represents you best, but either way I don't think you're qualified to be hearing this case.
Re:RTFA, it's not about hot linking (Score:5, Informative)
Nice effort (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Jones Day 1, Slashdot crowd 0 (Score:3, Informative)
>You have the absolute right to point to any resource on my server you want?
Yes.
PDFs are your friend (Score:1, Informative)
Filetype:pdf site:jonesday.com. Around 2,000 pieces of fun. Don't link to them! Don't use downthemall to get them all, don't zip them, and don't upload them to a torrent tracker.
Re:No Justice, No Peace? (Score:5, Informative)
No, because that is not something the judge should concern himself with. When he does concern himself with that, it suggests bias.
Re:oh yizzo (Score:1, Informative)
Re:wtf judge? (Score:5, Informative)
Or you can rate him here. This should get interesting:
http://www.therobingroom.com/Judge.aspx?ID=1190
Reaaaaddyyyyyyy GO
Re:At the rate this article is going... (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah. Like most forums, links in comments are given the rel="nofollow" attribute, which means google will ignore them.
Re:oh yizzo (Score:3, Informative)
Formatting is thus:
<a href="http://INSERT.URL.HERE">Insert text here</a>
The above example appears like this:
Insert text here [url.here]
Re:oh yizzo (Score:3, Informative)
Not really, every link to them on slashdot has [jonesday.com] next to it which is what they wanted from the website they sued. Perhaps if slashdot changed the site so that [jonesday.com] didn't appear.. maybe..
Re:At the rate this article is going... (Score:3, Informative)
Someone made a reference up where JonesDay.com Sacrifices Chinese babies in the name of Satan [jonesday.com] and it's already been indexed.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1136379&cid=26946099 [slashdot.org]
Re:RTFA, it's not about hot linking (Score:5, Informative)
Yep, but the judge in this case is the even bigger idiot.
Thing is, judges always say things like that -- to both sides. It doesn't tell you how they're ultimately going to rule.
Unlike on television, where every case goes to trial in 3 days, the reality of litigation is that the Courts do not have the resources for every case to go to trial. The Courts would need to be a hundred times their present size to accommodate that many trials.
In today's world of modern litigation, one of the functions of a judge is to get rid of the case, which involves arm twisting of BOTH sides. The judge tells each side why they're stupid not to settle.
So if the judge said that, you can't draw any conclusions as to how the case would ultimately wound up.
Re:This just in.... (Score:3, Informative)
You want goatse.fr
It is the only currently running second-level domain for goatse (As per the Wikipedia article).