By Paul Alan Levy, originally posted on Public Citizen’s Consumer Law and Policy blog.
Coventry First is in the viatical business. It buys life insurance policies hoping to profit from payment of the insurance proceeds when the insured dies. It recently got a spate of publicity for its trademark action against one of its critics who anonymously set up a parodic Twitter account, using the Twitter name coventryfirst, to publish a series of messages focusing on the ghoulish aspect of Coventry First’s business —the sooner the insured dies, the better the return on the investment. As one blogger noted, “it has been criticized as an industry that basically bets on death.” Coventry then sent a subpoena to Twitter demanding the identity of the account holder.
We at Public Citizen have defended consumers’ rights to use trademarks in domain names, Facebook account names, titles and meta tags of web sites and web pages that criticize the trademark holder. The ability to put the company or product name in those locations is important both because it identifies the subject of the criticism and, in many cases, may help consumers who are using search tools to find information about companies to find criticisms as well as the companies’ own self-aggrandizing web sites. We have also been concerned about efforts to overcome anonymity based on legal claims without a realistic chance of success because it puts speakers at risk of retaliation for speaking out against powerful and well-connected companies and politicians, and our client was worried about what she considered to be Coventry First’s pleasure at using its economic clout against perceived enemies. We were thus happy to help the Twitter user defend herself against the suit. We thus undertook to file a motion to quash the subpoena.
