Welcome to Our Law School, Young
Man. We'll See You in Court.
By ADAM LIPTAK
A Louisiana law school is
giving one of its students an
unusually comprehensive legal
education. In addition to offering
him the standard classes and
exams, it is suing him.
The dispute centers on a Web site
maintained by Douglas Dorhauer,
a student at the Paul M. Herbert
Law Center at Louisiana State
University in Baton Rouge. The
site is called lsulaw.com, and it
includes a school calendar,
law-related links and comments
by Mr. Dorhauer, some of them
critical of the law school.
These days it also includes
copies of cease-and-desist letters
from the school's lawyers and the
trademark infringement suit Mr.
Dorhauer received last month,
two days before his second-year final exams.
The lawsuit says Mr. Dorhauer is trading on the school's
good will and confusing people. It asks that he be
prohibited from using the site's name and requests an
unspecified amount of money and the law school's legal
fees.
Mr. Dorhauer has posted some tart discussion of the
claims in the suit. "If you can't figure out that this is not the
official site of a prominent Baton Rouge-area law school,"
he writes, "then you may do well to take up a career in
macramé or pottery — anything but the law, which
requires keen analytical skills."
School officials and the school's lawyer, Marc S.
Whitfield, declined requests for interviews. In an e-mail
message, the school's chancellor, John J. Costonis, said:
"We feel the suit speaks for itself. We certainly respect
Mr. Dorhauer's entitlement to express himself, but not at
the cost of likely confusion regarding the source of
information, particularly when that information is
incorrect."
Mr. Costonis said one student had "raised questions
relating to incorrect information that she had obtained
from his Web site thinking it was the Law Center's Web
site." He would not elaborate.
Mr. Costonis did say that Mr. Dorhauer remained a
student in good standing. "We are a law school, for
goodness' sake, and understand and teach the values of the
First Amendment," he said.
Mr. Dorhauer, 28, said he was perplexed by the fuss.
"Other than being a place where I can make known the
litigation, it is entirely a Web site of my own, consisting
of things I need as a law student, a calendar and other
personal information," he said. The site's home page bears
a disclaimer saying it is not affiliated with the law school.
Mr. Dorhauer has studied the law of domain names and
said he was confident he would prevail. Legal experts
who have inspected his Web site said he had a good case.
"There is definitely a fair use defense that applies to
criticism and commentary, and that's definitely what's
going on here," said Marjorie R. Esman, the chairwoman
of the New Orleans Bar Association's intellectual
property committee.
Jeffrey D. Neuburger, a New York lawyer specializing in
Internet law issues, largely agreed.
"To the extent he is using lsulaw.com as a domain name
only and the site is purely commentary on the school and
noncommercial, the school may have some problems," he
said.
Ms. Esman said the school had made a mistake in
asserting that Mr. Dorhauer aims to make money from the
site. "They do seem to be focusing their complaint
incorrectly on commercial uses," she said. "He's not
offering any services whatsoever."
E. Eric Guirard, a personal injury lawyer in Baton Rouge,
employs Mr. Dorhauer as a part-time law clerk, and he
said the site was noncommercial to a fault. "He did not
even have a link to my law firm, which kind of upset me,"
Mr. Guirard said.
The lawsuit has been a hot topic at the law school, said
Russel O. Primeaux, a lawyer who discussed the case
with students in a class he teaches there. "I think probably
if I had taken a head count, the majority would have been
in favor of the student."
The law of domain names is inconsistent. Many disputes
are resolved in arbitrations, which do not create binding
precedents.
In one arbitration, Pensacola Christian College in
Pensacola, Fla., sought to stop a former student from using
the domain name pensacolachristiancollege.com. The
arbitrators said the main purpose of the site "was to
express and allow others to express criticism" and the
student used the dot-com suffix rather than dot-edu "so as
not to create the impression it was a school-affiliated
site." They ruled for the student.
Under that reasoning, Mr. Dorhauer would seem to be in a
strong position. But Louisiana State University's complaint
raises an issue not present in the Pensacola case: Mr.
Dorhauer's site uses the colors associated with the
school's sports teams.
That was no accident, Mr. Dorhauer said. "I chose the
scheme purple and gold because I like the colors. Heck,
I'm a Tigers fan. I did, however, choose different colors
than are used in the official sites. If you take a look at Web
sites that either are or are not affiliated with L.S.U., you
will see that they use a deeper purple and a lighter gold."
Ms. Esman said the colors were unimportant. "L.S.U. has
no exclusive right to the colors purple and gold," she said.
"If you have ever been in Baton Rouge, you probably saw
lots of things that are purple and gold, and I'm sure they
are not suing all of those people."
Mr. Neuburger was less certain. "That's a bad fact for
him," he said. "He would be in a better position if he were
not using school colors."
Mr. Dorhauer said he did not welcome the suit but would
fight it. "They picked the wrong battle to fight," he said.
"I'm an old farm boy from out in the country. I aim to be a
country lawyer. I may not be that sophisticated, but I'm
danged hardheaded."
Mr. Neuburger reviewed Mr. Dorhauer's correspondence
with the law school's lawyers, which is also posted on the
site. He said the student was selling himself short.
"He actually wrote a good letter back to the school's
lawyers," Mr. Neuburger said. "It looks like he'll make a
good lawyer."
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