Plaintiff-oriented websites are ubiquitous in big class action lawsuits these days: think trumpuniversitylitigation.com, gmsecuritieslitigation.com, uberlawsuit.com.

But what if you argued such domain names violate the defendant's trademark? Could, say, the World Intellectual Property Organization be persuaded to shut the site down?

Nice try—but no way.

The WIPO arbitration and mediation center emphatically denied a bid by IP management giant CPA Global to kill the website CPAGlobal-Litigation.com, finding that the complaint “was brought in bad faith and constitutes an abuse of the administrative proceeding.”

CPA Global (which boasts that it works with 3,500 law firms) faces a potentially huge class action for allegedly overcharging its clients for patent renewal services.

The plaintiffs, represented by Kobre & Kim and Baker & Partners, with funding from Bentham IMF, launched the site to provide information to potential plaintiffs (hello readers, this might be you!) about the case.

Any litigation will be filed in Jersey (the Channel Island—not the Garden State), where CPA Global is incorporated, on behalf of CPA Global clients whose agreements select Jersey as the forum for disputes.

According to Kobre & Kim, which focuses exclusively on international fraud and misconduct and does “not ordinarily maintain repeat clients of our own,” CPA Global may have overbilled some clients by as much as 90 percent.

The fight has got all the makings of a donnybrook. The website is just a skirmish. After all, this isn't one of those class actions where plaintiffs counsel are trying to find every person who ever bought a pack of batteries. A website would hardly seem essential to litigate this case.

Still, CPA Global went after it. “The respondent is using the website at the disputed domain name to solicit contact details of the complainant's customers with a view to offering legal services, or to promote the respondent's own services,” claimed CPA Global, which was represented by in-house lawyers in the WIPO proceedings. “This is a deliberate use of the trademark to misleadingly divert the complainant's customers or to tarnish the reputation of the trademark.”

The WIPO panel—John Swinson, a partner at King & Wood Mallesons; Australian mediator and arbitrator Philip Argy; and David W. Quinto, general counsel of VidAngel in Los Angeles—was having none of that.

“The respondent is using the disputed domain name for the bona fide purpose of providing the public with information about the complainant's alleged overcharging practices, and to enable those with claims against the complainant to pursue a remedy,” they found.

Moreover, they noted that after the WIPO complaint was filed in October of 2017, the law firms added a prominent disclaimer that their site was not connected to CPA Global, and provided a link to CPA's website. “This disclaimer dispels any possible confusion between the website at the disputed domain name and the complainant.”

“The complainant ought to have known its complaint was doomed to fail. The respondent was clearly using the disputed domain name in good faith to promote and provide information about a legitimate service which it offers,” they concluded. “The panel considers the complainant launched the proceedings primarily to harass the respondent and disrupt its lawsuit.”

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Crowell's Crystal Ball

Crowell & Moring on Tuesday released its sixth annual litigation forecast, a 32-page look at the top litigation trends for 2018 across multiple practice areas.

From private antitrust litigation against the financial services industry to copyright issues related to 3D printing to increased litigation over government contract payments, the report aims to assist general counsel overseeing a diverse portfolio of litigation, said Crowell litigation group co-chair Mark Klapow.

“It's a very useful exercise,” he said—both for the clients that receive the report, and the firm lawyers who write it. “We're not just interested in the intricacies of the law for its own sake, but more importantly, how will it impact clients. … We don't just want to work the cases.”

As editor of the report, Klapow flagged three standout trends for 2018: the immediate impact of the Supreme Court's TC Heartland decision on patent venue, the move by state governments to fill the void in the environmental and product liability space (including partnering with plaintiffs law firms), and the rise of big data in litigation.

“Businesses know how important data is to innovation, but you also have to think about the unprecedented implications it poses for things like regulatory enforcement, product liability, cybersecurity, and IP,” says Cheryl Falvey, a partner at Crowell & Moring, co-chair of the firm's advertising & product risk management group, according to the report. If those kinds of factors are not addressed, she says, “data can become less of an asset and more of a liability.”

“Do you know what the data could be telling you about the performance of the company's medical device, for example, or the electrical grid or factory operations?” asks Falvey. “If there is an issue that ends up causing harm to someone, the question will be what did the data show in advance and were reasonable steps taken to understand that data and address any potential risks it revealed?”

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Lateral Watch

Clifford Chance has added Celeste Koeleveld, the former general counsel of the New York State Department of Financial Services and onetime head of the Criminal Division for the Southern District of New York, as a litigation partner in the Big Apple.

“We are building one of the leading white collar and regulatory practices in the U.S., and Celeste adds important complementary skills,” said David DiBari, head of the Americas litigation and dispute resolution practice. The Magic Circle firm now has 22 partners and counsel across its white-collar and regulatory defense and commercial litigation and arbitration practices in the Americas.

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Environmental law giant John C. Cruden has joined Beveridge & Diamond as a partner—a coup for the firm, and a loss to the Department of Justice, where he spent most of his career. Regarded as a dean of the environmental bar, Cruden headed DOJ's Environment and Natural Resources Division and is also the president of the American College of Environmental Lawyers.

“John is one of the country's preeminent environmental lawyers,” said Beveridge & Diamond Chairman Ben Wilson. “We know that our clients will benefit greatly from his wise counsel on litigation, regulatory, compliance, and enforcement matters.”

Even France is getting in on this: The Cupertino-based technology giant faces a preliminary French criminal probe for “programmed obsolescence” (in French, that's “obsolescence programmée.” You're welcome.)

The firm tallied about 25,000 hours of work on the civil theft claims from 10 attorneys and two paralegals.

“If I were his lawyer, I would tell him don't do it. There's no way he can avoid perjuring himself.”

The conduct went against court rules and the hashtag was “well beneath the dignity of the legal profession.”

There was no “reason to pile on further” by awarding attorney fees and costs to My Other Bag's counsel from Miller Korzenik Sommers.

Observers are confident the former Alston & Bird partner will get a presidential appointment to be U.S. attorney for New Jersey—eventually. Probably.

“My objective is to do something meaningful to abate this crisis, and to do it in 2018.”

Byrd's pro bono lawyer, Robert Loeb of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, faced a web of hypothetical situations posed by the justices—from rental car hijackers to fathers giving permission to sons to drive the family car.