| Mortgage Broker Settles With News Publisher
HSHÂ claimed Carolina Home Mortgage illegally used trademarks March 30, 2004 By MortgageDaily.com staff |
| A North Carolina mortgage brokerage has reportedly settled a lawsuit with a financial news publisher that accused the company of using a copyrighted trademark to make spammed email messages appear to be from the publisher.
Financial publisher HSH Associates announced that it recently settled the lawsuit against Carolina Home Mortgage Services for using its bestrates.com trademark on unsolicited bulk e-mail, or “spam,” to make it appear as if the messages originated from one of HSH’s domains. “HSH is committed to protecting our reputation and consumers who may be fooled into thinking that we are responsible,” said Paul Havemann, HSH vice president, in a written statement. “We will aggressively pursue legal action against anyone who illegally uses our trademarks in conjunction with spam.” HSH puts out a weekly analysis of interest rate activity. Many major new publications cite the weekly announcement in their own news stories. Under the terms of settlement, according to HSH, Carolina Home agreed to never again use the bestrates.com trademark, any other of HSH’s trademarks or near resemblance to them. The New Jersey-based financial publisher said that, under North Carolina law, spammers can pay as much as $10 per spam or $25,000 for each day spam messages are sent, plus attorneys’ fees and costs. Havemann said Carolina Home will pay a “significant” amount of money for its action, but he could not divulge the exact amount as this was part of the agreement between the parties. Carolina Home did not return calls upon MortgageDaily.com’s requests. The settlement announcement follows a recent survey by America Online, which showed that mortgage-related subject lines were the most often used in spam e-mails during 2003. |
