Independent
Voice of the
Ford Community since 1998.
January 18, 2001
By: C.
Mark Pickrell,
Attorney at Law.
The United States District Court approved the settlement reached by BlueOvalNews.com and Ford Motor Company last month. The settlement ends Ford's lawsuit against BlueOvalNews, filed in the summer of 1999. Under the terms of the settlement, BlueOvalNews may continue to operate as it has for the last sixteen months.
In the settlement, BlueOvalNews has permanently accepted the restrictions imposed by the district court in its 1999 preliminary injunction. Under those restrictions, BlueOvalNews: 1) may not solicit Ford employees to disclose Ford's internal documents, 2) may not violate Ford's copyrights, and 3) may not infringe Ford's trademarks. Blueovalnews has never objected to these basic restrictions. More importantly, the settlement agreement clarifies that BlueOvalNews cannot be prevented from publishing information, even confidential information from Ford's internal documents, that is "of public concern." In this way, the settlement agreement fully protects BlueOvalNews' First Amendment right to publish information that is important to the public, no matter what its original source. Because the settlement agreement fully supports the legal position taken by BlueOvalNews since it was sued by Ford, we could not be more pleased with the outcome of this lawsuit.
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