This lawsuit story comes from Retail Worker. It seems that big US retailer Walgreen's was suing a 13 year old girl for operating a web site that protests their selling cigarettes. The URL of her site is www.wallgreens.com. The 2 "l"'s look like cigarettes. 
According to the Retail Worker article, the lawsuit was dropped after a few stories about it made the mainstream news. Gee, I wonder what they were suing about?
Here's one of the original stories:
http://www.dailyherald.com/search/main_story.asp?intID=3734143
I've been following this one a while.
Walgreens was suing specifically for the domain (but yaaaaaaaaaa right):
quote:
"We're not seeking to change the content," said Walgreen spokesman Michael Polzin of Michelle's Web site. "But the site itself and the way it's spelled we feel infringes on our domain name in that it's spelled virtually the same."
"Spelled virtually the same". 
I wish I could find that article on the WIPO. It figures that they would go to this organization that has a history of biased favortism for huge Corporations. The more cases I read that the WIPO heard, the more nauseous I became. In my opinion this organization is nothing more that a rubber stamp for the corporate elite. However, it has become under scrutiny lately. People are questioning the blatant bias. Perhaps we need a web site to protest WIPO to ensure change!!!
For the corporate elite to pick on a small child who is learning to express her opinion and make a difference in her impressionable years is simply immorally pathetic. There appears to be now level too low that the corporate elite will go to stiffle free speech.
Then again I know of some unions I say the same thing about. I think I read the name in one of the threads here in this website.
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Michael Geist is the man in Canada to read about such things.
He's been a pretty strong critic of the WIPO and appears to have a much better game plan as far as Canadian domains are concerned.
But yeah, there's a ton of bad (albeit truthful) stuff being said about the WIPO these days.
Isn't it absolutely stupid what this big company was doing? Imagine, going after a 13 year old kid, a grade school student, who is on the Internet speaking her mind about something we all know is not a good thing: tobacco. She's just raising an issue that has been an issue since 1964 when it was discovered that, yes, tobacco does indeed cause cancer.
And what is this big corporation doing, suing her because "somebody might think her web site is an official walgreen's site".
I think we can all agree that walgreen's did a stupid thing by sending its lawyers out after this 13 year old girl and now, they've paid the price. Think of the rotten publicity they've generated for themselves. All those millions they spend each year on advertising - up in smoke! (I make no apologies 
). How awful. They would have been a lot smarter if they'd just left it all well enough alone.
And now for the question of the day:
What's the difference between this mega-corp suing a 13 year customer and a mega-union suing a part-time worker for speaking out? Speaking out on the Internet about something that's been near and dear to our hearts for a couple of hundred years now - democracy.
Really. I want to know. Fundamentally, I think it's pretty much the same thing that's happening.
In my opinion, there is no identifiable difference other than the names have been changed and not to protect he innocent.
THE ACTIONS ON THE PART OF UFCW INTERNATIONAL ARE SIMPLY APPREHENSIBLE.
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