February 26, 1998 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America has persuaded a federal court to block an antiabortion activist from using the charity’s name in the address of his World-Wide Web site.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York declined to overturn a March 1997 ruling that temporarily prevented Richard L. Bucci of Syracuse, N.Y., from using the name. The lower court said Mr. Bucci had willfully violated the charity’s trademark rights.
The dispute arose over Mr. Bucci’s use of “plannedparenthood.com” in his Web address, or “domain” in Internet parlance. Mr. Bucci secured the Web-site address in August 1996. (Web-site addresses are offered for a fee on a first-come, first-served basis.) People who visited Mr. Bucci’s site were greeted with the words, “Welcome to the Planned Parenthood Home Page!” They were then presented with information on an antiabortion book.
Judge Kimba Wood of the United States District Court, Southern District of New York, wrote in her decision last year that Mr. Bucci was “deliberately duping innocent users into believing they are receiving information emanating from Planned Parenthood.”
Mr. Bucci has not given up his fight against Planned Parenthood, which he says doesn’t plan parenthood but rather “the death of unborn children and the poisoning of our women.” He says he now plans to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.
The dispute over the “plannedparenthood.com” Web address is just one of a handful of battles involving non-profit groups over the use of their names on line. A similar case is currently pending in U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey, between Jews for Jesus, a religious group based in San Francisco, and Steven C. Brodsky, a Web-site designer in West Orange, N.J. Mr. Brodsky secured the “jewsforjesus.org” Web address and has posted disparaging messages about the group’s beliefs, such as, “Want to know why one cannot believe in Jesus and be a Jew?”
