Life Settlement Provider Coventry First Drops Twitter Trademark Infringement Suit
Copyright: | (c) 2011 A.M. Best Company, Inc. |
Source: | A.M. Best Company, Inc. |
Wordcount: | 435 |
Life insurance settlement provider Coventry First has dropped a trademark infringement lawsuit it filed in federal court alleging anonymous defendants were posting false Twitter messages saying that it wants people to die quickly.
Filed in the
In an email, Buerger said Coventry First dropped the suit "because we achieved our objective."
In its suit, the life settlement provider said it's used the trademark, Coventry First, in connection with its life settlement products and services. The defendants, Coventry First alleged, have established and actively use the domain twitter.com/coventryfirst and this site's domain name incorporates its trademark.
Levy said he planned to argue that there was no trademark infringement and that the First Amendment protects the right to speak anonymously "so long as the speech itself is not truly wrongful." Also, by starting discovery "without the court's permission, the plaintiff and its lawyers had violated the rules of procedure in federal court," he said.
Coventry First alleged the use of its trademark throughout the site and in connection with numerous "tweets" about the life-settlement industry "is likely to cause confusion in the marketplace as to the source, sponsorship and/or affiliation" of the site and the comments posted on it (BestWire,
One Tweet read: "sure, maybe health ins. companies want u to die fast once you get sick but they want u healthy for a long time first. Coventry wants u dead NOW!" and "the faster people die the more coventry first profits! Not even cig companies want their customers to die as fast" (BestWire,
Coventry First, one of the largest life settlement providers in
The firm alleged trademark infringement under the federal Lanham Act and violations of the federal Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, among others.
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