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Dow Jones Newswires
Business Wire Sues Over April Fool's Day Hoax
By JOHANNA BENNETT
Dow Jones Newswires
NEW YORK -- A trio of pranksters is being sued for using a well known business wire service to help pull off an April Fool's Day spoof involving a make-believe Internet company.
Officials at Business Wire, a San Francisco company that distributes corporate press releases electronically, said the company filed suit in a California federal court. The lawsuit - which named Janice Shell, Jeff Mitchell and William Ulrich as defendants - comes more than three weeks after a spoof where a phony press release was issued over the wire service regarding a fake government contract for a non-existent company.
Shell, Mitchell and Ulrich, all members of a loosely affiliated group of online stock sleuths known as FBN Associates, have maintained that the gag was meant to educate small investors about Internet stock scams. But Business Wire isn't laughing.
The lawsuit, filed Monday, asks for an injunction against the pranksters, as well as financial damages for violation of state and federal trademark laws, fraud, breach of contract, defamation and conspiracy, said Cathy Baron Tamraz, executive vice president of Business Wire.
Additional details regarding the lawsuit were not immediately available.
"It isn't funny," said Tamraz. "No one thinks it is funny anymore."
FBN Associates has become well known among Internet investors for its efforts to investigate online investment scams, as well as the group's annual April Fool's Day prank. Last year, the group created a Web site, complete with humorous advertisements, dedicated to a fake Y2K company and posted a press release about it on an Internet message board.
This year's prank also involved a make-believe Web site dedicated to a non-existent company, known as WebNode.com. And in what was billed as a "real estate of the Internet" deal, the bogus company claimed it had received a contract from the government to raise $4 billion to set up a fiber-optic system for the Next Generation Internet.
The deal, which offered 40 million nodes - a point for data to travel along the Internet - for $100 each, was publicized on an Internet message board and in a Business Wire press release.
The punch line came the next day when the pranksters attached a message to the WebNode.com Web site revealing that the company and the deal were not real. But by then, just under 2,000 people had e-mailed inquiries to WebNode.com asking about investment opportunities. Also, Wired, a popular online news magazine, took the press release as truth and published a story.
"It is clearly explained that this is a joke," said Shell, a co-defendant.
Business Wire has claimed, among other things, that the prank damaged the wire service's reputation, adding that WebNode.com responded to inquiries from investors many of whom believed the press release information. The lawsuit also alleges that the defendants defamed Business Wire by making false assertions that Business Wire was involved in fraudulent investment schemes, according to a company press release.
Shell and Ulrich denied Business Wire's accusations.
Ulrich concedes that he has pointed out that Business Wire has run press releases in the past containing false information, but he says he has never accused the wire service of active involvement in fraud.
"Business Wire prefers to come after us for pointing it out, rather than going after companies that actually take money from people," Ulrich said.
Meanwhile, Shell said prank organizers never collected sensitive information from investors or responded to investors' inquiries.
"Why are they going after us?" Shell said. "Our purpose is to educate investors about scams hypes. Why aren't they going after some of the bad guys?"
Meanwhile, Bruce Methven, Ulrich's attorney, and Mitchell, a co-defendant, declined to comment about the lawsuit, adding that they have yet to see a copy of the court documents.
Business Wire serves about 15,000 clients who pay fees to run corporate press releases on their wire. A regular account was established for WebNode.com.
-Johanna Bennett; 201-938-5670
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