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In Federal Court, Dell vs. CompAmerica.com: It's a near free
Publish Date : 11/29/2004 4:24:00 PM   Source : American Local News Onlypunjab.com

A free for all nearly ensues during a Temporary Restraining Order hearing, as Dell's lawyer accuses CompAmerica (http://www.compamerica.com) of what CompAmerica calls "in Dell's wildest dreams" defamatory behavior by posting hypertext links to "IHateDell.net", "Dell S*cks", "Don't Buy Dell" and "theripoffreport.com", and other public websites (the content is mirrored at- http://www.deadendclub.com).
CompAmerica has claimed "fair marketing game" for the right to point out with hypertext links, the enormous clamor against Dell, including complaints about its call centers overseas, and the vast number of "anti-Dell" websites that appear to have cropped up in the past year(s) on the web "pages that number in the tens of thousands".

CompAmerica calls them, simply, examples of public clamor against Dell, and placed news links to them on http://www.thedellkillers.com/ --a site which is down temporarily (see mirror above), as CompAmerica seeks appropriate legal protection for the website through the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Dell vs. CompAmerica lawsuit update:

CompAmerica indicated that the initial Temporary Restraining Order hearing had come and gone and that Dell continued to take the position that CompAmerica’s use of “the DellKillers” as a comparative expression, was going to confuse the public, an allegation CompAmerica felt was “nonsense”.

Dell also claimed that by pointing links on “the DellKillers.com” website to such sites as “ihatedell.net” and Google searches for such expressions as “Dell S*cks” and “Don’t Buy Dell”, which return tens of hundreds of websites and pages of Anti-Dell venomous commentary, was “libelous” when used for commerce.

CompAmerica suggested that if Dell did not like the pages its hypertext links pointed to “as an example of the rising tide of anti-Dell clamor on the web”, that Dell should “contact the alleged customers who posted the anti-Dell content and work it out with them – the quickest way to solve a customer complaint is to address it the the customer’s satisfaction. But don’t go calling us libelous for pointing out that so many alleged Dell Customers are allegedly frustrated enough to file a ‘theripoffreport.com’ complaint for $5, or create a Blog about how they allegedly think, for what every reason, how bad you are as a computer company.”

“We respect the Court’s decision, whatever way it turns out. Nonetheless, we obviously do not believe we are barred from calling our products ‘real Dell killers’, or in the case of a single product: ‘it’s a Dell Killer product’. This statement is, in our opinion, true. We believe we honor our service agreements better than Dell does. We also believe we have the right to use expressions like “easier to use than Dell” and “better than Dell” and “less expensive than Dell” on our website, despite Dell’s apparent protests."

"From our reply, one can see we believe Dell's lawsuit is a nonsensical abuse of the legal process, they have sustained no implicit nor actual damages, they are a $48 Billion company which could sustain an impact from larger companies like HP or IBM. We are thousandths their size - why pick on us? They are suing us for pointing out the truth – that we have better products and service – claiming using their name in these statement infringes their copyright. So, what that means is: if that were the case, then if Mitsubishi believes it's cars stop in a shorter distance than Honda, they'd get sued for mentioning it. Doubtful, unless it weren't true."

"Dell is also suing us for pointing hypertext links to third party criticism of Dell. That protest is equally nonsense – any member of the public can find those pages, all they have to do is search on “Dell S*cks” in Google. If Dell believes those who are publishing the sites we pointed links to are lying, then why aren't they off the web: Dell should have sue them."

"We believe that if Dell’s legal arguments were so, then no company would ever again be able to compare it’s products to any other and claim they have a better product; or point out publications that decry a competitor’s customer service ratings. It is the inalienable right of one company to point out reason to believe its competitor is not as good at the job as it is. In our opinion: Dell is trying to hide its performance as a business, computer company and customer service organization from the Public’s critical eye by bashing any competitor making a fair comparison or exposing the web of deceit that Public Blogger and Product/Vendor Rating Websites are alleging of Dell.     To claim it's service is somehow superior, as part of it's sales strategy is in our opinion pretty deceptive: if in fact the service is as bad as thousands claim in gripe websites you can find all over the internet. To claim it's PCs start at $399, when in fact the average PC at Dell costs two or more times that, is FICTIONALIZATION and in our opinion, a TV AD "bait and switch" ('...starting at $399 after mail in rebate" says the Dell TV Ad). Particularly when all your PCs look alike, its a deception in our opinion. There are very few lines of distinction seperating different choices. The ads suggests to us that, in our opinion: Dell has a lot to hide, both in terms of it's service performance and in terms of customer satisfaction about it's products. We are hopeful that the Public has the full benefit of exposure of Dell for this absurd exercise in corporate bashing. Dell’s lawyer admitted he ‘had to hit CompAmerica over the head with a two by four’ to get us to take down “thedellkillers.com”. We have news for Mr. Dell, we didn’t take it down because of any two by four over the head he claims he hit us with, sticks and stones may break our bones but names will never hurt us: we took it down to give us time to obtain a trademark on the domain name, which anyone can find in the USPTO online.”

“We pointed the website’s commentary links, on thedellkillers.com, to the origins of thousands of links of anti-Dell websites and pages, to news stories in legitimate publications, too, such as Court TV online, and IDG, where news about millions of Dell Laptop Battery and AC Adapter recalls and even an SEC investigation of the relationship between Dell and appellant/convicted securities consultant Frank Quattrone, could be found. In common marketing practice, negative statements about Dell that persist in publications around the web are fair game, publication by the original parties can be challenged by Dell, but not our pointing them out. We do not take customer complaints as frivolous, especially if they post them on the web. Even the claim we pointed one link to on Yahoo's websites, that Dell is supposedly a proxy marketing business for IBM, that's been rumored about in the computer industry for decades. While it's something no one may ever be able to prove or disprove, one of those urban legends that just might be true or note - we don't know. Yet it's not grounds to sue over. It's not damaging to be affiliated with the world's largest, most powerful computer company."

Company CEO, Jack A. Shulman, was described as “insulted that Mike Dell and Kevin Rollins would take out an entire Federal Lawsuit against nonexistent damages, and false allegations of brand dilution, against a much smaller peer in the computer industry over a contest of egos. If they wanted to debate the issue, I’d have gladly gotten someone at CNBC to host an hour long debate between us on the relative merits of Dell using a single cooling fan and ducting versus our three cooling fans, air flow ventilation and open cabinetry, or our smart batteries, power controllers and AC adapters, versus Dell’s millions of recalls of it’s batteries and AC adapters. But it’s not a fair contest that Dell wants. It is digging deeply into its shareholders’ pockets to spend millions on a lawsuit that has nothing financially to gain and only a worse reputation for Dell than when they started it."

"Frankly, exposing any bad Dell practices is something that is appealing to me, either Dell will have to change them, I doubt that, or it will do nothing and succomb. I've thought since they started bashing us back in the late 90’s, that the whole story should come out so those who think they should buy a Dell find out what they are in for, from those that already did."

"My last call of the day today was from a Dell customer who said, and I quote: ‘I would never buy another Dell as long as I lived’. And that, surprisingly, is the most common comment we’d heard. But not the worst. We get calls from customers who bought from us five, ten, even twenty years ago, and they keep calling us for more CompAmerica computer equipment. We're not perfect, but statistically Dell has a dunce cap on and should go stand in a corner for about 3 to 10 years.”

CompAmerica indicated that since the lawsuit started, it had experienced intimidation from local Dell Stealth Reseller personnel, who’d moved into their office building in the past year and were contacting their customers, that someone had been raiding it’s webstore and eBay resellers of it’s products were experiencing “auction assassinations” where fake buy orders were being placed to knock auctions off eBay without selling anything, a costly process that deprived CompAmerica’s store operators at eBay of the insertion fees paid to eBay, that someone had hacked into “thedellkillers.com” website but failed to incapacitate it, and that the company president had experienced death threats from unknown third parties.

For a full statement by the company go here: http://www.compamerica.com/tdknews/ . CompAmerica indicated it had no idea who would threaten it's management.

"Obviously, though, we're on the lookout for that random Dell employee with a two by four in his hands who might be lurking in the shadows." quipped John Davis, Jr., a spokesperson for CompAmerica.

CASE INFORMATION STATEMENT
Dell Inc. vs. CompAmerica et al
U.S. District Court, Newark, NJ
Case: 04-5297