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Act 69: Taubman Moves to Amend the Complaint

On March 6, 2002, Taubman moved to amend their complaint to add a charge of copyright infringement to their previous charges of trademark infringement and cybersquatting. My ShopsAtWillowBend.com site included a couple of graphics that I downloaded from Taubman's site. I figured that they wouldn't mind, as I was using the graphics to promote their mall. And I also assumed that the graphics were part of their standard publicity kit, items that they distributed to publications in the hopes of getting some free publicity. (In fact, I've seen the graphics elsewhere on the Web, so I still believe that to be the case, although I don't know it for a fact. I might know more if Taubman had actually responded substantively to my discovery requests... but that's another story...) However, having said all that, I still would have removed the graphics from my site if Taubman had objected to them. But Taubman never did object, not in all the months that they knew that my site was online, not in all the months since the judge ordered me to remove the site from the Web. But now that the site has been offline for five months, they decided to quickly file a copyright registration on the graphics and charge me with violating their copyright. Follow the links below to read about it (in a separate window) in the words of Taubman's lawyer, Julie Greenberg. Note that I haven't reposted the entire complaint, only the "count" that was just added. (I believe that the rest is identical to the original complaint, although I haven't reviewed it closely enough to be certain.) Motion Brief Complaint Amendment

©2002 Hank Mishkoff
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