South Carolina

I blogged about Orthomom's victory on Friday. Here's another big win for a blogger recently. Last Monday, the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina granted summary judgment to Philip Smith in the lawsuit brought against him by BidZirk, LLC, Daniel Schmidt, and Jill Patterson. The decision contains a handful of rulings that could be helpful to bloggers faced with lawsuits in the future. Most significantly, the court held that Smith's blogging activity fit the "news reporting and news commentary" statutory defense to trademark dilution liability under 15 U.S.C. § 1125(c)(4)(C).

In January 2006, Smith published a four-part article, entitled "Special Report: You Gotta Be Berserk To Use An eBay Listing Company! The Whole Story." In the post, Smith depicted his negative experience with BidZirk and his interactions with the company's president, Daniel Schmidt. In the course of this discussion, Smith reproduced BidZirk's logo and made snarky comments about it. He also discussed more generally the positive and negative aspects of using an eBay listing company, such as BidZirk, and provided a checklist for readers to consult in deciding whether to do so. Additionally, he linked to an article on another website that discussed Schmidt and Patterson's upcoming wedding and contained a photograph of them.   read more »