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On December 20, 2001, I received this curious fax from Ms. Greenberg.
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Dear Mr. Mishkoff:
Yesterday I was informed that your website, www.webfeats.com, featured the mark "The
Shops at Willow Bend." When I visited the site in order to determine the nature of the use, I was
surprised to learn that the mark had actually been incorporated onto the site as a hyperlink to the
now-enjoined website, www.shopsatwillowbend.com.
On clicking the link, I was taken to the offending website, which was clearly operational,
yet password protected.
Please take notice that we consider any operation of the website, whether or not password
protected, to constitute a violation of the Court's injunction dated October 11, 2001, which reads,
in pertinent part:
Defendants are hereby RESTRAINED and ENJOINED from using the
Internet domain name www.shopsatwillowbend.com. FURTHER
Defendants are ORDERED to remove the domain name
www.shopsatwillowbend.com from the Internet.
To assure compliance with the Court's order, we are taking steps to inform the service provider
of the injunction.
I trust you will take prompt steps to comply with the order, to avoid involving the Court
in this matter.
Very truly yours,
Julie A. Greenberg
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View the Original Letter (in a
separate window)
I can understand why the situation might have been confusing to Ms.
Greenberg (as explained in my response, below). What I can't understand is why she would make the
statement that the site "was clearly operational" (emphasis mine). If she was unable
to view the site because of the password protection, how could she possibly have come to the
conclusion that it was operational, much less claim that it was "clearly" operational? Things that
she can't even see are nonetheless "clear" to her? Some kind of divination process, perhaps?
Anyway, it wasn't a big deal – so when I returned her fax later
that day, I managed to refrain from making snide comments in my response. (As I have "clearly" been
unable to do here!)
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Dear Julie:
I am in receipt of your fax of earlier today.
The www.ShopsAtWillowBend.com website is not operational. I removed the site from the Internet
immediately upon receipt of the judge's order.
The "authorization" (password protection) dialogue that you encountered actually "protects"
nothing at all. In fact, if you were authorized to enter my system and were to enter your username
and password into the authorization dialogue at that site, you would receive an error saying, "Not
Found: The file you requested was not found on this webserver." (This is my customized substitution
for what is technically known as a "404" error.)
I understand your confusion upon discovering the inactive link to my "mall" website on the
WebFeats home page. I had removed that link when I removed the website, as I don't like to have
"dead" links on any of my web pages. I noticed that the link had "reappeared" yesterday, and I
removed it again at that time (so the link was actually gone well before I received your fax). I'm
not sure how that happened; my guess is that I accidentally used an outdated copy of my home page
from which to make some revisions.
The link in question was probably online for no more than a day or two, and at no time was it
possible for anyone to use that link to access my "mall" site - which, as I said, is not, and has
not been, online.
Hank Mishkoff
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