I’m not disappointed that there’s another right-wing 527 getting ready to tarnish our political discourse; I’m disappointed that it’s not more creative about coming up with a name.
Move over, MoveOn.org. The liberal-leaning group that has raised millions of dollars to run negative ads attacking President Bush now has a competitor on the right with a somewhat similar name.
The conservative MoveOnForAmerica.org plans to blast battleground states with anti-John Kerry ads until Election Day.
I realize that coming up with a name can be challenging, but MoveOnForAmerica.org? They took MoveOn.org and the ___ for America tag (you know, Dean for America, Democracy for America, etc.) and pushed them together. That’s worse that cheap; it’s sad. Indeed, I find it hard to get angry at these conservative activists when I’m feeling sorry for how pathetic they’ve become.
Alas, the right has been doing this for a while. When TV preacher Pat Robertson created a legal group, he called it the ACLJ (American Center for Law and Justice) so that it would strikingly similar to the legal group its founders hated most (ACLU).
I just don’t think these kinds of tactics occur to the left. We haven’t created think-tanks called the Heritage Institute and the Cato Foundation. We didn’t form a gun-control group named the NRA — National Rifle Alliance.
And, as it turns out, MoveOnForAmerica.org isn’t just politically sleazy; it’s legally dubious. Michael Froomkin makes a good case that it’s inviting a lawsuit from the real MoveOn.org that the imitation group would likely lose.
The “moveonforamerica.org” name is being used in the same sector — indeed, clearly imitates moveon.org’s tactic of putting commercials online before going to TV — and is almost certain to be found to be likely to cause confusion, deception or mistake. Were moveon.org to decide to sue, at the very least the moveonforamerica.org guys are likely to be found guilty of trademark infringement, which requires only a showing of “likelihood of confusion”. I imagine that if it chooses to, moveon.org could get a federal injunction against their use of the name. It could probably also yank the domain name either in federal court or via the ICANN UDRP quasi-arbitration procedure for domain name disputes.
There are important and substantial First Amendment protections for political speech that trump the trademark statute. These include a right to parody, and a right to refer to an organization you are criticizing by its own name (“nominative fair use”). But none apply to attempts to create a confusingly similar name for yourself in the hope of confusing the public.
Good points, all. This new “group” exists to deceive voters with a name that will sound familiar to the public because the organization stole it.
One can only hope that MoveOn will sue just to stop this nonsense from continuing. (Next up from conservatives: a new AARP — American Association of right-wing people)