Shields v. Zuccarini

254 F.3d 476 (2001)

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Shields v. Zuccarini

United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
254 F.3d 476 (2001)

Facts

Joe Shields (plaintiff) was a graphic artist who, under the names Joe Cartoon and The Joe Cartoon Co., authored and marketed various cartoons, including “Frog Blender,” “Micro Gerbil,” and “Live and Let Dive.” Shields licensed his cartoons for display on various merchandise items, such as T-shirts and coffee mugs, which were sold through the national retail chain Spencer Gifts and tourist venues, as well as over the internet. In June 1997, Shields registered the domain name joecartoon.com. Ever since the website accessed at joecartoon.com (Shields’s website) won a “shock site of the day” recognition from a publisher, the popularity of Shields’s website grew, reaching 700,000 visits per month. In November 1999, John Zuccarini (defendant) registered five domain names that were intentional misspellings of joecartoon.com, namely: joescartoon.com, joecarton.com, joescartons.com, joescartoons.com, and cartoonjoe.com. Each website accessible from those five domain names (collectively, Zuccarini’s sites) contained advertisements that, if clicked by a computer user, would generate between ten and twenty-give cents of revenue to Zuccarini. A visitor to one of Zuccarini’s sites would be mousetrapped at the site, meaning that the user could not exit the site without clicking on a series of advertisements. In December 1999, Shields sent Zuccarini cease-and-desist letters. Instead of responding to those letters. Zuccarini changed the web pages of each of Zuccarini’s sites to political-protest pages that each charged Shields with making light of animal mutilation and killings and stating his refusal to transfer any of the five domain names. Shields then sued Zuccarini under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA). The district court granted a summary judgment in Shields’s favor and awarded damages. Zuccarini appealed, arguing that his intentionally misspelled domain names were not actionable under the ACPA because none of them were identical to joecartoon.com.

Rule of Law

Issue

Holding and Reasoning (Aldisert, J.)

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