Forwarded with permission. I will have my own comments later. -- Dan
Dan, can you please forward. _______________________ A caveat: I have only read the BNA Report of the case. It appeared from the report that the plaintiff did not have a registered trademark, and the court found a common law mark (and a famous one at that). The court also seems to have been strongly influenced by the fact that the site was a porn site, with little relevant information pertaining to the Papal visit. Instead, the court believed that the use of the mark was purely for commercial advantage, a classic infringement case. To me, this seems like an even weaker case than Planned Parenthood, in that the defendant in Planned Parenthood arguably had a non-commercial motive for his deceptive speech. As a rather biased observer in this shooting match, this seems to be a rather nasty case of legal determinism: i.e., the St. Louis court didn't *like* the St. Louis Papal visit being used as a gateway to a porn site. A classic example of bad facts making bad law. We'll see if defendant bothers to appeal. In any event, the free speech argument is a bit tough to make in this case, it seems to me, since defendant did not (according to the report I read) have significant content on the site relating to the visit or the Pope. One wonders if the result would have been different in any of the following situations: a) A pro-Pope group other than the St. Louis Archdiocese using the name to advertise the papal visit; b) a pro-choice group using the cite to organize an anti-papal protest. Harold
