Cybergripers are people who maintain a website critizing (griping) a company or a group.  Most of the time, the domain names of these websites contain the trademark of the company, with or without an added disparaging term like ‘sucks’ or ‘bites’.  Websites like boycottdelta.com, breakupmicrosoft.org, fordsucks.com are some examples out of a wide range of gripesites.  You can find a lot more on www.webgripesites.com.    

The gripesite may be a parody on the related trademark, but it can also contain a forum to discuss complaints, giving customers and employees a platform to share information on their experience with the service and goods of the organization involved.  A majority of the gripesites are created by customers.  

Criticizing services and goods on gripesites has a much bigger impact than the traditional complaining in the pre-Internet era.  The Internet simply gives the cybergriper a huge potential audience, way bigger than just your friends, family, and co-workers. Everybody who is connected to the Internet is able to you read your story and form their own opinion.

Gripesites:  A positive or negative attraction?
Positive

• Gripesites let organizations know how their customers experience their products and services, and in that way, it’s a great potential information source for customer’s wishes and demands. It gives free input on how to improve the product

• Provides other customers with information from "their own side", so they are able to make an informed decision, not only on the basis of commercials and information, but from the company itself.  Thus, a gripesite can be a great source of information. 
  

Negative

• Public Confusion--Not only can public confusion result by the use of the trademark in the gripesites’ domain name, but also a company’s goodwill can be negatively affected by affiliation with the content of the gripesite. 
  

• Claims--cybergripers can be subjected to claims of, trademark infringement, trademark dilution, unfair competition, and cybersquatting.

For all these reasons, it’s not strange that companies institute civil actions against these kind of sites, trying to protect their reputation, claiming to shut down the site, and seeking  damages.  However, trademark owners have not always been successful.  Some cases are decided in favor of the trademark owner on the ground that the gripesite infringes the trademark, while others are decided in favor of the gripesite concluding that the cybergripe website falls under freedom of speech protections.  Currently, the law regarding gripesites is in a state of flux.  Courts struggle withInfringement and dilution on the one hand versus non-commercial speech protected by the First Amendment on the other side. 

In the next sections we take a closer look at these court decisions.  We will look at the applicable legislation and the criteria used in those cases.  After discussing some cases, we draw a conclusion from these decisions.  We also discuss two alternatives trademark onwers have in taking action against gripesites.  At the end you’ll find some useful links to websites concerning these topics.

Continue to Gripesite Caselaw