Can we use trademark law to go after spammers?

Spammers will frequently send out mail using someone else's domain and/or e-mail address. That way, when they get irate messages back, or just the inevitable avalanche of non-delivery reports, those are all routed to the e-mail address used and not the spammer.
This is known as "spoofing" or "Joe Jobbing".

This article says that trademark law might help fight this. Granted, it is after the fact in this case - it doesn't prevent this from happening to you - but it appears to give you legal recourse after it does happen.

From the article:

The secret weapon that protects your domain name and even allows you to pursue someone who spoofs your domain name? Trademark law.

Register your domain as a trademark (in this context, a "service mark"). Then, if you want, you can sue spoofers for trademark infringement.

Yes, it's really that simple. Run, don't walk, to get your domain registered. If your trademark is accepted (the U.S. Trademark Office rejects many domain-name trademarks), you'll have a way to stop the spoofer.

It also adds:

This is one of the beauties of using trademark law. You can sue not only Spoofer, but also anyone who benefited from the infringement. Most spam is in English, and most English-language spam has some connection to the United States, usually through the merchant whose goods or services are advertised in the spam. Thus, it becomes relatively easy to find a culpable party on whom to serve a lawsuit. And if the party isn't the actual spoofer it will, in fairly short order, lead you to the spoofer. Plus, you may recover some of your financial losses by suing for damages.

Registering a trademark costs only $335.00, plus whatever fees you pay to the attorney or service that prepares the application. Trademark registration services can be found online for as little as $200.00. It's a small price to pay for such a big and potentially effective insurance policy.

I am of course, not a lawyer, so I have no clue at all how legally valid any of this is. But for those that care about such things, this is perhaps something worthwhile to pursue, at least for those of you in the U.S.

Posted by Eric at August 16, 2004 11:10 AM | TrackBack