Over at the Consumer Law & Policy blog there is a post about the legal troubles of Justin Leonard, the owner of InfomercialScams.com, a site that posts unedited reviews of various infomercial products.

Apparently he gets sued, like, every damn day:

First, he was sued in Florida by the infomercial company GlobalTec, which sells day-trading software. GlobalTec alleged that, by posting reviews of GlobalTec products that turned up in Google searches, Leonard was infringing the company’s trademark. With the assistance of Public Citizen, Leonard filed a motion to dismiss, pointing out that, among many other problems with the lawsuit, he lived in Arizona and had no connection with the state where he had been sued. Last month, the court accepted Public Citizen’s arguments and dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction.

Next, Leonard received a subpoena from Video Professor, an infomercial company that sells video-based courses, demanding that Leonard turn over IP addresses and other personally identifying information about everyone who posted reviews of the company’s products. Leonard objected, again with the help of Public Citizen, and yesterday Video Professor withdrew its subpoena, although it did not drop its lawsuit and is apparently still pursuing another subpoena to discover the identity of a Wikipedia user, who the company claims defamed it in the online encyclopedia.

So it came as no surprise to Leonard when he learned of yet another lawsuit against him, this time in Michigan, brought by the Infomercial company Lifestyle Lift, which performs a facelift procedure that it claims takes only about an hour.

The Public Citizen has been helping Justin out, but as the CL&P blog points out—not every small website has access to pro bono trademark lawyers. Shame on these shady companies for resorting to legal bullying.

The Hazards of Running a Consumer Review Website [CL&P]

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