Taubman v. Mishkoff (Letters)

After hearing that the Taubman Company Limited Partnership was building a large shopping mall near his home, Henry Mishkoff created a website and registered a domain name for it at "shopsatwillowbend.com." (Taubman's official website for the mall was located at "theshopsatwillowbend.com" and "shopwillowbend.com.")

Mishkoff's website featured information about the mall, including a map and links to the individual websites of the tenant stores. The site contained a prominent disclaimer, saying that Mishkoff's site was "unofficial" and providing a link to Taubman's official site. Mishkoff characterized his site as a "fan site" with no commercial purpose, but it linked to the website associated with his web design company, Webfeats, and the website of his girlfriend's shirt company.

Taubman sent Mishkoff a series of letters claiming that Mishkoff's use of the domain name violated its trademark rights and demanding that he remove the site and transfer the domain to them. Preliminary settlement negotations fell through and Taubman filed a lawsuit in federal district court in August 2001. (For more information, please see the CMLP Database entry for the Taubman v. Webfeats lawsuit.)