ISIPP Urges US Businesses To Fight Spammers Using Trademark Law

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

23 August 2004

The US Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy (ISIPP) last week urged businesses to go after spammers who employ spoofed domain names for bulk mailings, using trademark law.

"Domain spoofing is a serious problem for legitimate online businesses," explained Anne P. Mitchell, president and CEO of the Institute. "It causes the victim business' email to be rejected by spam filters, causes their own mail servers to be overloaded with the rejections of the spam which was sent in their name, and can cause them to be listed on anti-spam blocklists, all of which can result in a loss of reputation and business."

Although under the CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) Act, there is little that businesses can do to protect themselves from this kind of activity, ISIPP has suggested that if the domain name being targeted is traditionally associated with the name of a business, trade mark legislation may allow the spoofing victim to target the spammers and advertisers more effectively.

"Trademark law gives these individual businesses that right of action, and can provide immediate restraining orders and freezing of assets. You can imagine the impact of all these individual lawsuits against spammers; it's the 'death by 1000 paper cuts' concept in action," the Institute president explained.

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