Intellectual Property Law

Judge to Defendant: Take Down Web Site or Pay $100 Per Day Sanction

By Michael Atkins

Screen shot from defendant’s Web site

James Garcia’s having a tough time of it.

In August, Western District Judge Richard Jones gave the owner of defendant Seattle Roof Brokers a choice: either publish a statement on his Web site linking to the court’s order finding him liable for making false statements about plaintiff Certainteed Corp., or take all content offline until the court approves it. (Previous STL post here.)

Yesterday, the court found Mr. Garcia went in a different direction.

“Rather than publish the specific website content that the court authorized, Mr. Garcia published a website that not only substantially altered the content he had submitted to the court, but included a substantial amount of new content as well,” which Certainteed alleges is filled with false statements.

Without considering the truth or falsity of the statements, the court found that Mr. Garcia violated the court’s order.

Here’s its remedy.

“Accordingly, the court orders [Mr.] Garcia to take ‘offline’ all websites under this control (including seattleroofbroker.com and any similar sites). He shall do so no later than 12:00 p.m. on September 2, 2010, and the websites shall remain ‘offline’ until further order of the court. If he does not comply with this order, he will be deemed in contempt of court, and will, at a minimum, be subject to a sanction of $100 for each day that his website or websites remain online.”

The case cite is Certainteed Corp. v. Seattle Roof Brokers, No. 09-563 (W.D. Wash. Aug. 30, 2010) (Jones, J.).

Full post as published by Seattle Trademark Lawyer on September 01, 2010 (boomark / email).