Use their haiku mark
to sneak your spam past filters
they'll see you in court
SAN JOSE, Calif. - This could prove interesting: an antispam company suing the spammers for... using its poetry without permission. And these lines on a litigation theme are written by the bards at Habeas, a Palo Alto spam fighter who has hit five suspected spammers with lawsuits charging they used the company trademark - which includes a form of Japanese haiku - to sneak their spam past the spam filters.
"As we have promised since the public launch of Habeas, we will sue any individual or organization who abuses our trademark in order to send unwanted mail," said Habeas president and chief executive officer Anne P. Mitchell in a formal statement. "Spam is an epidemic. Habeas is built on the premise that our novel application of Federal copyright and trademark protection can stop spam, which is time consuming, resource draining, and costs everyone money."
The five defendants are Avalend, a financial service/mortgage refinancier on Long Island; Avalend's sister company, Intermark Media; Dale Heller, Stan Stuchinski (BigDogSecrets.com), and Clickbank, the latter a payment processing division of Keynetics, Inc. The trademark in question involves Habeas's Sender Warranted E-mail service, which the company says works by trademarking and copyrighting a unique set of lines embedded in the headers of outgoing e-mail. The lines include a form of haiku - and Habeas says those who counterfeit it face shutdowns and damages for $1 million and perhaps more.
Avalend and Intermark were named in one lawsuit charging infringement and infringing use of the Habeas trademark in an e-mail to help get the spam past the filters, Habeas said in an April 3 statement. Heller was sued for signing a Habeas license and then using the trademark in an e-mail which didn't comply with their Habeas license, with the companies advertised in the Heller e-mail named as co-defendants.
Stuchinski, whose BigDogSecrets.com promotes his e-book on Internet marketing, Secrets of the Big Dogs, told AVN Online that the Habeas lawsuit is "frivolous law at its worst," insisting his operation tries "very, very carefully to run a good, honest, tight, legitimate ship." He also said he had never even known of Habeas until he was notified of the lawsuits - and that he believes Heller, who made an affiliation deal with his operation to promote the e-book, is the main focus of the breach-of-contract suit to which Stuchinski and Clickbank were named as co-respondent.
"Since he has been an affiliate he has not sold one single e-book that we promote," Stuchinski said by telephone from his East Coast office. "I'm not trying to cast aspersion on him, because I don't know him, and I don't know what he did. He entered into an agreement with this company, and they are indicating he breached some kind of contract. To say that we conspired to actively usurp their trademark is nonsense. Absolute nonsense."
Intermark President Mike Krongel told reporters elsewhere that he was surprised by the lawsuit - from a company he, too, had never heard of. He described his company as a mailing list renter for targeted advertising but he denied being a spammer.
Avalend describes itself as a network of reputable online mortgage lenders to make it easier for homebuyers to shop online. Their privacy statement says their Website registration form requires users to share contact information "to follow up after an application has been submitted," but a user "may opt out of receiving future mailings... Financial information that is collected is used for other purposes." And while their site contains links to other sites, Avalend's privacy statement continues, "Avalend.com is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such Websites...their privacy practices may differ from ours."
Habeas partners came to the company's defense in the lawsuits. "Mortgage and Affiliate Program spammers are among the most prolific sources of junk mail sent to our users," said Outblaze Limited postmaster/abuse desk manager Suresh Ramasubramanian. "Habeas has always said that they would sue anyone attempting to misuse or falsify Habeas SWE headers in order to get past spam filters. (We) strongly support Habeas in their anti-spam efforts."
So does Apache James. "People rely on Habeas to enable them to receive the email they need and make it easy to distinguish between wanted email and spam," said Apache James PMC chairman Serge Knystautas. "Habeas must aggressively pursue any violators of their copyrights and trademarks to ensure the sanctity of their headers. We support their efforts."
Habeas launched in August 2002. They reportedly protect over 300 million e-mailboxes in over 100 countries around the world. Last month, Habeas announced seven spam-fighting providers had adopted their solution: Apache James, ESCOM, Group Mail, Spamcounterstrike, Spamfire, Spamnix and TMDA. They had previously been recognized and/or employed by SpamAssassin, Mailshell, Mail-Filters.com, iHateSpam, SpamBouncer, Cybersitter, Roaring Penguin's Can-it, Gwava, Repel for Outlook, and Spam Agent, among others.
