SCIENTOLOGY SUES PARODY WEBSITE
Wednesday, October 19 2005
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The Church of Scientology has warned a satirical New Zealand website that it will take legal action against it unless it stops using the domain name www.scienTOMogy.info. The website claims it is devoted to "exposing Tom Cruise's moronic behavior in his relentless crusade to promote" Scientology. In an interview with today's (Wednesday) Los Angeles Times, attorney Helena Kobrin, representing the controversial organization, said: "You can't use someone else's trademarks to promote your own agenda. ... Changing one letter is the trick of the infringer to try to get around the law, but the law makes it very clear that you can't do that." However, the courts have held that a trademark may be legally parodied if a reasonable person is not likely to confuse it with the original. The site itself says that it is not connected with the Church of Scientology and offers a link to the actual Scientology site. It also states that it "is purely satirical ... and is completely non-commercial."
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