Youth for Climate Truth (YFCT) created a website, www.koch-inc.com, and issued a fake press release from Koch Industries, a company that has challenged the science of climate change. The release stated that the company had agreed not to fund organizations denying climate change.
Koch sued YFCT on a number of grounds including trademark infringement. The judge threw the suit out saying that YFCT’s activities were not commercial and therefore protected by the First Amendment, not state or federal trademark law. The Lanham Act regulating trademark applied only to economic competition, the judge said, not competition of ideas. -db
From a commentary for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, May 9, 2011, by Corynne McSherry.