Circus Sues Animal-Rights Group In Domain Dispute

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April 24, 1998 (12:00 AM EDT)

Circus Sues Animal-Rights Group In Domain Dispute

By John Borland,

The circus is coming to town, but this time nobody is smiling.

The Ringling Brothers' Barnum and Bailey Circus has filed suit against the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), charging that the animal-rights group has stolen its trademarked name with a website spotlighting the company's animal training practices.

PETA's site spotlights a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) action against the circus in connection with the January death of a performing elephant, and provides links back to the group's home page. The page clearly states it is maintained by PETA, and has no affiliation with the Ringling Brothers organization.

But circus officials say that is not nearly enough. They say the site is deceptive, and is undermining Ringling's reputation and trademark.

"PETA is using the website under our trademark to lure people to their information," said circus spokeswoman Katherine Ort-Mabry. "The extremists have stolen a valuable corporate asset, our name."

PETA officials said they have not decided whether or not to fight the circus in court. Next week, the two parties' lawyers will meet to settle on a course of action, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk said.

But in the meantime, the group is gleefully taking advantage of the publicity. "We're getting a huge increase in the number of hits," said PETA president Ingrid Newkirk. "We're wondering if maybe there's a PETA mole working in their PR department."

The group added a video of a trainer beating an elephant on Friday, and is spotlighting news of the USDA action against the circus. The site has been up for about a month, Newkirk said, but Ringling Brothers did not complain until the day of the USDA filing.

The suit is the latest in a growing string of trademark disputes some critics say are pushing the boundaries of trademark law too far into cyberspace.

"It is snowballing," said Mikki Barry, president of the Washington D.C.-based Domain Name Rights Coalition (DNCR). "The rights of people to free speech are being trampled on here."

Courts are increasingly stretching trademark law to cover domain name disputes that should be protected by First Amendment speech rights, or in which no real confusion between businesses is possible, Barry said. "The saddest thing about it, is that [corporations] seem to have greater rights on the Internet than in the real world," she said. "There are hundreds of cases ... where people are legitimately using a domain name and there is no confusion whatever."

David Loudry, a Chicago lawyer specializing in domain and trademark law, agreed courts have inconsistently applied trademark law to domain disputes. "Most [decisions] have ignored the requirement that domain names be used commercially in commerce in order to be an infringement," he said.

Courts have said a political site like PETA's can be treated as a commercial site, if links point to pages soliciting donations or asking members to sign up, Loundy noted. In these cases, protections for parodies and political speech have taken a back seat to trademark law, which may hurt PETA if its case comes to court, he said.

"At that point what they're doing is trading on someone else's name to ask for money," he said.

The circus dispute is not PETA's first foray into domain battles. Two years ago, a meat-lover named Michael Doughney registered the peta.org domain as an acronym standing for "People Eating Tasty Animals." After PETA appealed, Internet names registrar Network Solutions, put a hold on the domain, effectively shutting it down.

Doughney went on to found the DNRC, which lobbies Congress to include free-speech and trademark concerns in privatizing the domain name system.

The DNRC is not supporting PETA's position against the circus, saying the page's links to the organization's sign-up page do make it vulnerable to a trademark suit.