Chicago IP Attorney & Lawyer : R. David Donoghue : Chicago IP Litigation Blog

Jones Day v. BlockShopper.com, No. 08 C 4572 (N.D. Ill.) (Darrah, J.).

As I have described in earlier posts (click here, here and here) plaintiff Jones Day sued defendants, BlockShopper LLC and two individuals associated with the website (collectively "Blockshopper"), for allegedly using Jones Day’s service marks and linking to its website in at least two articles discussing Chicago real estate transactions of Jones Day associates. Jones Day claims service mark infringement, Lanham Act false designation of origin, Lanham Act dilution, and state law deceptive trade practices and unfair competition. Plaintiff also moved for a temporary restraining order (“TRO”).  The parties stipulated to a TRO which the Court entered ordering defendants not to:  1) use Jones Day's service mark; 2) use any content from or link to Jones Day's website; or reference Jones Day in Blockshopper headlines. 

Last Friday, Blockshopper filed a motion to dismiss.  And several public interest groups -- the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge and the Citizen Media Law Project -- has sought leave to file this amicus brief supporting Blockshopper's motion to dismiss.  Jones Day opposed the motion, arguing that the three groups and their arguments do not meet any of the Seventh Circuit's standards for amicus filings.  I will keep you posted about the case generally and as to  whether the Court enters the amicus brief.

And the case continues to draw fairly strong legal blog interest:

• The Prior Art
   
• Real Lawyers Have Blogs (LexBlog's Kevin O'Keefe)
   
• Public Citizen at its Consumer Law & Policy blog (acknowledging that he was incorrect as to the timing of an alleged quote from Judge Darrah, which he also did in a comment to my post discussing the alleged quote)
   
• Las Vegas Trademark Attorney
   
• Citizen Vox
   
• Ars Technica (and here, discussing the amicus brief)

The legal blog commentary continues to run heavily against Jones Day and in favor of Blockshopper.

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Since writing my May Carnival of Trust post (click here for the post), several others have commented on Web Strategy by Jeremiah's post suggesting that people do not trust bloggers.  Of course, the real point of the studies Owyang cites is that people do not trust an unspecified blogger as much as their family or other unspecified news sources.  As I said before, that should be an expected result and it shows good judgment.  But it is easy to get caught up in the survey and miss the fact that people trust "their" bloggers -- those that they have entered a conversation with, read regularly and, therefore, have developed a trust with.  Several others have picked up on Owyang's post and the surveys, with similar comments.  I am posting them in an Addendum to avoid breaking the Carnival of Trust ten post rule (although I will update that post with a link to this one).  Here are some of the commentaries:

• Kevin O'Keefe at LexBlog and Real Lawyers Have Blogs says that he must be trusted, there is no explanation for his site traffic and speaking engagements except trust -- click here for Kevin's post:

People put their butts on the line at least once a month asking me to speak in front of large groups. Just received invites to speak at the Texas Bar Annual Conference and to keynote at a Wisconsin Bar Association Conference. I don't know any of the people who invite me. They're reading my blog. If they didn't trust what I was writing, would I get an invite?

Law firms, from solo's to the largest in the country, call me for advise on blogging. The same firms subscribe to LexBlog's blog service. No other way those folks know me than my blogging.

And for the record, Kevin is wrong, he is pretty funny.  But he is correct in that the legal community would not keep reading his blog for the humor alone, it is for his insights coupled with his delivery.

• Kevin also cited Bill Ives at the Fast Foward Blog who had similar comments, arguing that blogs (as opposed to MSM sources) require more work on the part of readers to determine whether they should trust the blogger and on the part of the blogger to cultivate and earn that trust -- click here for the post:

Blogs are conversations and they do put more responsibility on the reader to judge the material than say, the New York Times, with its army of fact checkers. But even the NYT gets it wrong some times and everyone has some type of bias. Blogs are also a medium. The NYT also has many of them. Do you trust a magazine article more than television? In each case, the answer would be it depends on the person. This is not say that communication channels do not have their own properties. Naturally, seeing someone on TV gives you more information than a magazine article. Blogs are usually the voice of a single person or a group of individuals and not an editorial board. However, a blogger has to build the trust of his or her audience by being consistent and transparent as the first commenter wrote above.

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