Sense and sensibility
Jerry Falwell's sensibilities were injured by a site calling itself www.fallwell.com. The site clearly said that it had nothing to do with Falwell, and was critical of Falwell's views — it also received only 200 hits a day.
After a district court found that the name was infringing Falwell's trademark rights, and ordered the site to transfer its name to Rev. Falwell, the site owner bravely appealed. Today the Fourth Circuit acted with enormous sense, and issued an important opinion [pdf] striking down Rev. Falwell's claims.
Among other things, the opinion makes clear that you need to consider domain names in context — here, there was no question, once you got to the content of the site, that you weren't dealing with the “real” Falwell. And the opinion is rightfully skeptical of “initial interest confusion.”
(The idea behind “initial interest confusion” is that if you persuade a consumer to follow your signage [domain name] thinking that they're going somewhere in particular that isn't your site, even if by the time of purchase from you they're absolutely clear about what they're buying, something has gone terribly legally wrong. Right — it doesn't really make sense.)
Congratulations to Paul Levy of Public Citizen, and all the lawyers and law professors who weighed in on this case.