People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals v. Doughney
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals v. Doughney, 263 F.3d 359, was an Internet domain trademark infringement decision by the United States [Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit]. The ruling became an early precedent on the nature of domain names as both trademarked intellectual property and free speech.
Background
In 1995, Michael Doughney registered the domain name peta.org for his website titled "People Eating Tasty Animals". The website contained links to over 30 sites including some that promoted the sale of leather goods and meats. At the bottom of the page, the website inquired "Feeling lost? Offended? Perhaps you should, like, exit immediately" and provided a link to the official People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals website, which due to Doughney's action had to use a less intuitive domain name.In 1996, PETA requested that Doughney voluntarily transfer the domain name, because it owned the trademark for "PETA" though it had not yet used the acronym as a domain name. Doughney refused to do so, leading to the lawsuit, in which PETA alleged that Doughney had committed trademark infringement, trademark dilution, unfair competition, and cybersquatting. The case was first heard at the United States [District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia|District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia].
Initially, PETA did not seek compensation other than enjoining Doughney from using the peta.org domain and seeking an order for him to transfer peta.org to PETA. Meanwhile, Doughney claimed that his website was a parody, which was an act of free speech and which should absolve him of the trademark infringement allegation.
The District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled in favor of PETA and ordered Doughney to stop using the peta.org domain and to hand it over to the organization. Doughney appealed this decision to the Fourth Circuit. The district court did not honor PETA's request for Doughney to pay its legal fees, so the organization cross-appealed that decision.
Circuit court opinion
Accusation of trademark infringement
The acronym "PETA" was a registered trademark that belonged to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Thus the trademark infringement claim centered on whether the "defendant used the mark 'in connection with the sale, offering for sale, distribution, or advertising' of goods or services." The circuit court concluded that because the website may have confused users who wanted to buy items from or make donations to the true PETA organization, it was "connected" to commerce even though Doughney did not sell any goods or services.Doughney claimed that his peta.org website was a parody of the PETA organization, and was free speech permissible under the First Amendment to [the United States Constitution|First Amendment]. The court relied on Cliffs Notes, Inc. v. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. to rule that, in order to constitute a parody, Doughney's peta.org site should simultaneously convey that the site was not the official PETA site, and that it was merely a parody.
The court held that the domain name "peta.org" implied ownership by the organization, and thus did not qualify as a parody. The court found it unnecessary to review the content of Doughney's site and only considered his use of the domain name. Thus, while the court alluded to Doughney's First Amendment right to create a parody, it ruled that doing so in the form of a website with a domain name that infringed on the target's trademark was not allowable due to the possible confusion for viewers of the site over its ownership.
This refusal to consider a site's content when determining whether it qualifies as a parody was arguably rejected by the Fourth Circuit in Lamparello v. Falwell, where in discussing PETA v. Doughney, the court wrote, "o determine whether a likelihood of confusion exists, a court should not consider how closely a fragment of a given use duplicates the trademark, but must instead consider whether the use in its entirety creates a likelihood of confusion."