Sunday, July 13, 2008

Meet Green Shift's Lawyers

Joshua Spicer and Christine Pallotta. They seem like nice kids.

Here's the statement of claim.


h/t to Kady.

11 comments:

Babylonian777 said...

Who are they libs going to put in for the pro-bono defence??? Maria "filibuster" Minna? Who can barley put together a coherent sentence without contradicting herself? Is she even a lawyer?

I understand that there are A LOT of Lib lawyers, but will it really help to throw in a dream team? They have their "David" now let’s see your "Goliath".

Remember, now is not the time to be cocky about this, all it took was a sling, a stone, and a hit in the head to bring down the old giant. And it doesn't help that the libs have feet made of clay either.

James Curran said...

Come on Babble On. Of course it's going to be Ken Dryden, Martha Hall Findlay and Bob Rae.

Anonymous said...

James: come on can't lib activists tone down the arrogance evah? Don't forget pride cometh before the fall...

James Curran said...

Wait til she has to produce the list of so-called clients that have left and those same clients have to testify. Then we'll see who is "stretching the truth" and who is arrogant.

Do you really think Ms. Wright has her clients privacy and welfare in mind? I think not.

Anonymous said...

James: I am not familiar enough with trademark law to know whether she will have a sufficient case. I do think that given the LPC prior awareness of her company and the length of time it took the party to 'officially' release the plan, the outcome may have been different had they shown less arrogance and consulted her as opposed to dictate to her which is what happened.

For Wright to be told in the 11th hour before the release of the LPC plan either shows what a poor leader Dion is and how disorganized the leader's office is OR is yet another example of Liberal arrogance pure and simple.

Whether Wright wins or loses I don't think that the LPC or Dion will come off as clean on this one with the average Canadian.

Jason Hickman said...

Without getting into the merits of the lawsuit - IP law isn't my area of expertise by a *long* shot - I will say that B&P is a pretty well-known and respected firm in the IP/trademark field. The GS Inc owner hasn't signed up unknowns in the field by any means.

Make of that what you will, but I found it interesting. If nothing else, I'm sure they've outlined her chances [as much as any lawyer can, anyway], and set out to a "T" what her obligations in terms of what she has to disclose.

James Curran said...

The Canadian public couldn't give a flying shit about this case. In actuality, the Liberals didn't have to even give her notice at all. But they did. And that was nice of them. Is she planning on suing the rest of the North American companies and Municipalities utilizing the Green Shift as well? Highly unlikely. she wouldn't get millions of dollars in free advertising that way.

She has now jeopardized her entire client roster. And, she did this of her own accord.

Make no mistake, she had a lot of liquid courage fed to her by the big blue blogging machine that was encouraging thousands of readers to flood Green Shift with faxes and phone calls. Ms. Wright has become exactly what she claims she didn't wanna be...a political pawn.

And answer me this. If you are a so-called Environmentalist and 66% of Canadians support Dion's Green Shift and David Suzuki supports the Green Shift, why the hell in the world wouldn't you want to be associated with it?

Ms. Wright is missing the boat here.

maureen said...

Isn't it prudent and normal business practice to register variations of your company name on the internet? I know our accountant suggested we register all variations of our company name and for a small annual fee these domain names such .com or .ca or .org or variations to the company name are renewed annually. It seems to me that "green shift" is guilty of sloppy business practices.

James Curran said...

Thank you Jason for that tidbit.

Maureen, you hit the nail on the head. I'm told the Liberal Party did exactly that. Most candidates do that as well when they register their sites. What was the point of saving the $6.95 per domain name. Surely if you have the wherewithal to lodge a massive lawsuit, you could afford it.

greenshift said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
greenshift said...

Whoever buys into the idea that you can protect yourself by buying up all surrounding web sites - you might want to consider that someone can simply affix your name to the end of their own website with a forward slash - they don't need to register a new site at all. Secondly, where does it end - we / Green Shift do own a multitude of "Green Shift" domains but do you really think there will not always be one you don't have... come on people - there are now tonnes of endings and soon to be even more, and multiply that by all the verbs that someone could affix to it - that is a losing battle. Trademarks on the other hand do have parameters and for everyone who has no clue about what this means you might want to do a little reading. The biggest issue with a trademark is how far do your right span and can you afford to protect it. If a Political Party started a campaign using the trademark from a very well known company, it is guaranteed that they would receive a Cease and Desist - the difference here is that they ignored it and hence the fact that it has turned in to a lawsuit. Why did they ignore it - maybe they gambled that we could not afford to protect our rights. If you don't believe me - I recommend that you read up - maybe starting at Industry Canada and the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and then looking at the number of cases where small companies cannot afford to exercise their rights.