The fact that the site was an adult site had everything to do with the
finding of dilution and nothng to do with the free speech analysis. There
is nothing in the language of the case to indicate that the nature of the
defendnat's site affected the court's holding that the domain name as a
domain name - papalvisit.com - was not communicative speech and but was a
designation of origin. Compare this case with the bally sucks case, where
bally argued that it was tarnished by the proximity to homo erotic photos.
that did not stop the court from holding that the url including the term
"ballysucks" was protected free use.
______________
>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
