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By Adam Pasick
NEW YORK, Aug 27 (Reuters) - For Ford Motor Co , shutting down a Web site that posted rumors on corporate layoffs was job one.
Ford objected to an item on job cuts that was posted on the Web site, titled "Ford, where finding a job is job one," arguing that it infringed on the trademark of its slogan, "Ford, where quality is job one."
Ford also complained about other headlines at the site which played on slogans like "Built Ford Tough" and referred to Ford trademarks like the Ford Explorer and the Model T.
The automaker's lawyers threatened to sue the company's Internet service provider, Hostcentric, after which the site was taken off-line.
The Web site, called FuckedCompany.com, rose to prominence documenting rumors of layoffs and other strife in the dot-com boom. It went dark for two days this month, after a threat of legal action by the automaker.
"They said it was confusingly similar to their slogan, as if someone would think my site is a sanctioned Ford site because of a play on words," said Phillip Kaplan, the Web site's founder.
"They were taking trademarked slogans like 'Quality is job one' and changing them in disparaging ways," countered Greg Phillips, an attorney for Ford with the firm Howard Phillips & Andersen.
The site, which originally parodied the New Economy magazine Fast Company before it was forced to change its logo, is now operational again with the Ford headlines removed, dishing rumors on companies such as International Business Machines and Commerce One .
Fremont, California-based Hostcentric declined to comment.
Ford has long been known for its aggressive stance against online critics. The company has taken legal action against the owner of fordsucks.com and others trying to sell Ford-related domain names on EBay.com.
TRADEMARK LAW AMBIGUOUS
Phillips told CNet, the online news site that first reported the dispute, that "parody under the law doesn't magically fend off trademark infringements," citing the 1995 Federal Trademark Dilution Act.
The parody of trademarks is a legal gray area, said intellectual property lawyer Ian Jay Kaufman of New York-based Ladas & Parry, one that is not explicitly spelled out in the Trademark Dilution Act.
"It's a balancing of free speech and parody, and disparagement," he said. "Every plaintiff picks and chooses what's going to be really damaging and what's not going to matter. Most of the time the users don't have that much money, and you don't want to get the reputation of being a bully picking on a little guy."
Explicitly exempted under the Trademark Dilution law are noncommercial uses, fair use such as comparative advertising, and all forms of news reporting and commentary, such as the first sentence in this article.
Other parodies of Ford slogans are easy to find.
A 1996 episode of the David Letterman Show featured a top-10 parody list of suggested Ford slogans in the wake of several several high-profile vehicle fires, which included "Have you driven a Ford to the fire station lately."