Dot-com doom site dented in head-on crash with Ford

NEWS By Paul Festa Having dodged trademark and copyright arrows since its inception, the web's premier dot-com dead pool has succumbed to legal pressure from offended websites. Phil Kaplan's FuckedCompany.com, a website that has gained fame and some fortune collecting rumours and reports of layoffs, closures and other dot-com fiascos, found itself shut down for nearly two days after Ford complained to the site's ISP about alleged trademark infringements. Ford's complaints centred on Kaplan's headlines on articles relating to layoffs at the car giant. For example, in a letter dated 12 July, Ford's lawyers said Kaplan's headline 'Ford, where finding a job is job 1' was "confusingly similar to Ford's advertising slogan 'Ford, where quality is job 1'." Kaplan at first pulled down the passages Ford objected to but inserted links to Ford's letter along with a crude reference to the automaker. In response, according to Kaplan, Ford threatened to sue Hostcentric, Kaplan's ISP, which pulled Kaplan's site altogether. Hostcentric could not immediately be reached for comment. After a few more back and forth manoeuvres, the industry gossip site is back in business - but only after meeting Ford's demands. "The whole [problem] is that if you do a search on Ford and copyright lawsuit, you'll find a million examples of Ford doing this," Kaplan said. "If you're a company that size you can do anything you want in the world." Greg Phillips, an attorney for Ford with the firm Howard Phillips and Andersen, countered that the company was responsibly protecting its trademark - something trademark holders are required to do consistently if they are to enforce them. "Ford is probably dealing with about 100 different infringements related to the internet in some way," Phillips said. "I think that's probably pretty standard given you have Ford and all its brands, including Jaguar, Volvo and Lincoln Mercury. In my view that's in the ballpark of what I would expect from a company with so many famous brands." He also dismissed the notion that Kaplan's headlines were not violations of trademark, but rather easily recognisable parodies of Ford's slogans. Paul Festa writes for News.com