U-Haul and eMove, Inc. vs Michael Glanz and HireAHelper, Inc.
United States District Court of Arizona, 2-08-cv-01271
The Parties
HireAHelper began in 2007 and operates a website of the same name that offers several different kinds of casual labor, including moving services. Both Glanz and his wife were personally named as defendants in the lawsuit.
It’s a bit of a David and Goliath situation; U-Haul is a giant and Mr. Glanz’s HireAHelper is a young upstart in the hotly contested moving industry.
The Story, In Brief
There are a few interesting factual entanglements in this story. Glanz probably got on U-Haul’s radar before he even went live with his site.
Glanz was a beginning web designer and still in school when he first began thinking about a building a website to connect consumers with casual labor in 2005.
In 2005 and prior to starting HireAHelper, Glanz signed up with eMove to offer moving services. U-Haul alleges that he signed up in order to steal U-Haul’s proprietary secrets and know-how. During the five-month period he was registered with eMove, Glanz declined 23 moving jobs and accepted four, but only actually completed one. Emove offers this as evidence that Glanz had ulterior motives in accessing its site.
Glanz, on the other hand, alleges that he signed up to be a mover at eMove.com in 2005 because he was a student and wanted to make some extra money in his free time helping people move. Glanz also alleges that he took so few jobs because they ended up not really working with his full-time student schedule. Further, Glanz freely admits that his own experience helping people move partly inspired him to include moving labor as one the types of casual labor markets his site promotes.
Interestingly, the contract Glanz entered into in order to register as a mover with eMove included a lot of probably unenforceable provisions about the confidentiality of ALL information on eMove.com, even the public information. It also includes strict provisions about use of trademarks, trade dress and domain names. One of the reasons that U-Haul is suing Glanz personally (and not just his corporation) is because Glanz entered into this contract in his personal capacity.
In addition to becoming a member of eMove for a brief period in 2005, Glanz wrote a blog post discussing eMove.com two months before unveiling HireAHelper.com in 2007. In the post, he pays eMove.com a backhanded compliment by listing it as a site that suffers from ‘bad design,” but succeeds at business better than fancier designed e-commerce sites. It appears that U-Haul began preparing for this case only a matter of months after this post and the launch of the new site. Coincidence? I think not.
U-Haul apparently owns the registered trademarks “Moving Help®” and “Moving Helper®”. Yeah. I know. Those particular phrases look pretty generic and descriptive to me too. Now. I’m not saying this is what is going on here, but it seems like an increasingly popular strategy for corporations to try and get their most profitable keywords registered with the trademark office so that they can then send nasty cease and desist letters or initiate expensive legal battles against smaller competitors. The little guys are much less likely to put up a fight. They know they can’t afford the legal battle to invalidate registration of the claimed trademarks.
[Note: Remember, just because the trademark office registers a trademark, does not mean that the mark will hold up in court. For example, consider the sad case of American Blinds. Claiming infringement of their registered trademark, American Blinds sued Google in federal court. Not only did they lose the infringement claim, the judge also invalidated their trademark by ruling “American Blinds” was too generic to be protected by trademark law. Thus, American Blinds actually ended the lawsuit with less than it started.
So, just because a trademark is registered doesn’t mean it is bullet proof. Having a registered trademark is an evidentiary advantage in a lawsuit and allows you to claim more money damages than non-registered trademarks, but it is not a sure-fire win in a court of law.
But I digress. Back to the issue in this case.]
HireAHelper allegedly uses the words “moving,” “helper” and “moving helper” in the content of its website. U-Haul claims that HireAHelper’s use infringes its lawful trademarks.
In addition to trademark infringement, U-Haul is claiming copyright infringement, breach of contract, and misappropriation of trade secrets, among other things. It is also asking the judge to immediately (i.e., pre-trial) prohibit HireAHelper from using “moving help” or “moving helper” in any of its meta tags or visible content.
Conclusion
It is beyond the scope of this post to go over each claim, but I think the trademark infringement case forms the backbone of U-Haul’s rather weak case. U-Haul appears to have a difficult time identifying how exactly HireAHelper infringes its copyrights and instead makes vague assertions about the structure of the websites being too similar. Further, the contract claims only hold water to the extent the trademark and copyright claims are valid. It just seems unlikely that Glanz was given access to anything truly proprietary and confidential during the five months he was registered as a mover with eMove.com. Of course, it is very early in the litigation process and U-Haul filed some things “under seal,” meaning “in secret.” Thus, the case outlook could change completely in the discovery process.
Even though the lawsuit was only filed this summer, the lawyers have been very busy raising arguments about injunctions, jurisdiction, extensions of time, etc. It is likely that HireAHelper feels the expense of this litigation much more painfully than U-Haul.
Given their differences in resources, U-Haul may win the lawsuit by sheer attrition: He who can afford to keep going wins. The sooner it can drown HireAHelper in attorneys’ fees, the better U-Haul’s chances of forcing a settlement before a judge can adjudicate its highly descriptive/generic trademarks. It is the sad truth that we don’t have equal access to justice in the U.S.A.
As always, I’ll keep you posted as the case develops.
Best Regards,
Sarah Bird
