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Pastimes : Business Wire Falls for April Fools Prank, Sues FBNers -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elllk who wrote (2164)	5/6/1999 7:14:00 PM
From: Janice Shell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3795

By the way, has BW ever gone after a corporation for filing a false or misleading news release? You mean...REAL companies that filed genuinely false PRs? No. We're the only people Bizwire's bothered to sue for that stuff. Never mind. Let me tell you about a Curious Episode. On or about April first, an ordinary guy who has a family website ran the Webnode press release there. Bizwire found out, and objected. Mr McCrae changed his text: On 4/1/99 it was reported that WebNode.com would sell $4 Billion of NextGeneration Internet Nodes to the public. It seemed legitimate at first, but later turned out to be an April Fool's joke. The MSN Investor was taken in, and so was I. On May 4, I received an email from Thomas M. Onda, intellectual property counsel for Business Wire, headquartered in San Francisco, California saying, The subject press release currently is the subject of litigation in Federal Court between Business Wire and the principals of Webnode.com. In that regard, we request your cooperation in removing the subject press release from [the McRae Clan] website to avoid creating further confusion. I complied with the Mr. Onda's request, so unfortunately, you can't see the original press release, but it was a good one. mcraeclan.com This raises two interesting points: 1. What, exactly, did Mr Onda mean when he described us (presumably) as the "principals" of Webnode. PLEASE GOD tell me they don't REALLY believe we're a company. Maybe he just couldn't think of another word. I hope that's it. 2. Shall we discuss what appears to be a rather bizarre definition of "intellectual property"? lolol, incredible, isn't it?