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Website About Tiananmen Square Protests Is Protected by First Amendment, Public Citizen to Tell Massachusetts Court

Oct. 5, 2010
  
Website About Tiananmen Square Protests Is Protected by First Amendment, Public Citizen to Tell Massachusetts Court

Claims of Trademark Infringement Are Frivolous, Public Citizen to Argue

WHAT:  A Public Citizen attorney, Paul Alan Levy, will defend the makers of a documentary film about the historic 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in China, who are wrongly being sued for trademark law violations by a company led by Ling Chai, one of the student leaders portrayed in the film. The case will be argued in Suffolk County Superior Court in Boston.

The company Jenzabar Inc., which makes software for colleges and universities, is claiming that Long Bow, a group that makes award-winning documentary films about China, cannot use Jenzabar’s name as part of the meta tags on Web pages about Jenzabar.

Public Citizen maintains that the meta tags are noncommercial speech that truthfully describe a subject of the Web page, so they should be protected by the First Amendment. Additionally, the use of Jenzabar’s name does not constitute a trademark violation, Levy will tell the court.

To read more about the case, visit https://www.citizen.org/litigation/forms/cases/getlinkforcase.cfm?cID=575. !!!

WHEN:  2 p.m. EDT, Thursday, Oct. 7

WHERE:   Suffolk County Superior Court, Courtroom 1015, 3 Pemberton Square,
  Boston, Mass.

WHO:  Paul Alan Levy, attorney with Public Citizen
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Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.citizen.org.