Court: Petroleum Lobby's Site ChooseEnergy.org Doesn't Infringe on Broker Choose Energy's Trademark
November 07,2014
A court recently ruled that the American Petroleum Institute's website chooseenergy.org (now defunct), which encouraged visitors to support candidates who favor development of domestic petroleum resources, did not infringe on the trademark of broker Choose Energy, Inc., which runs the online energy marketplace chooseenergy.com, JD Supra reported.
According to JDsupra.com, "Political speech with no commercial component, the Court held, can only trigger Lanham Act liability if the parties are in competition, and here 'there is no world in which API's political activity might compete with Choose Energy's non-partisan commercial energy platform.'"
That being said, the Court noted that API had made a, "commitment under penalty of perjury that its campaign will end come election day." The chooseenergy.org site now returns a blank page.