Country Store, 'squatter' settle
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By PETER CRABTREE Herald Staff - Published: May 5, 2005
MANCHESTER — The Vermont Country Store has settled a lawsuit with a Las Vegas man it accused of being a "cybersquatter" because he operated Web sites with names similar to its own.
Michael Nelson, who once ran for mayor of Montpelier, agreed to cancel the domain name registrations for 22 Web sites, including several that were critical of the company's lawyers and executives.
U.S. District Court Judge J. Garvan Murtha signed an order last week that also prohibited Nelson from contacting employees of the Vermont Country Store and its law firm or their family members. Nelson was accused of threatening some of those involved in the case.
Nelson, who has denied the allegations, said Wednesday that he had no choice but to submit to the Vermont Country Store's demands given its financial might.
The company "made it very clear they would bankrupt me," Nelson said in a telephone interview from Las Vegas. "I signed whatever I had to in order to make them stop."
The Manchester-based retailer filed a complaint in March alleging that Nelson had used the name Montpelier Vermont Country Store on a Web site he ran.
When it objected, Nelson allegedly responded with "an aggressive cybersquatting campaign" in which he registered other Internet addresses with similar names.
He also launched Web sites bearing the names of the company's law firm, Gravel and Shea of Burlington, and several of its attorneys. That firm represents many Vermont businesses, including the Rutland Herald.
Nelson meant to intimidate and defame the lawyers, according to the complaint.
Nelson allegedly offered to sell the Vermont Country Store and Gravel and Shea at least 14 domain names in return for a "ransom" of $14,655.
"Nelson maintains Web sites that include links intended to deceive and divert traffic to his sites, to harm Vermont Country Store's business and extort money," according to the complaint.
The company's attorney, Andrew Manitsky, said Wednesday that the "Vermont Country Store is pleased that ultimately we were able to reach an amicable resolution." He declined further comment.
Nelson's attorney, Andrew Jaffe, said his client considered Vermont Country Store to be a generic term rather than a trademark, as the Manchester retailer had argued.
Jaffe also took issue with the company's characterization of Nelson as a cybersquatter, saying that he never tried to "shake anybody down."
Nelson created his Web sites with the intention of running independent businesses rather than merely selling the domain names to Vermont Country Store, which is the typical cybersquatter strategy, according to Jaffe.
When Nelson offered to relinquish the domain names for $14,655, "he was trying to sell the work he had put into the sites, not the sites themselves," Jaffe said from Akron, Ohio. "He wasn't just trying to sell the names."
As for the Web sites that singled out company executives and attorneys for criticism, Nelson considered that a separate matter.
"In his opinion, that was free speech," Jaffe said.
A former Montpelier resident, Nelson ran for mayor in 2000, losing to incumbent Chuck Karparis, 1,939-701.
He graduated from Norwich University in 1997. The school obtained a restraining order banning him from campus in 2001. He was also prohibited from contacting a dozen college employees, according to Washington Superior Court documents.
Nelson has had disputes with at least two small Vermont businesses for which he designed Web sites. Clare Mcafee of Berlin, who sells wigs on-line, claimed she paid Nelson $2,400, only to have him direct customers to her competitors. Damian Renzello of East Montpelier, who sells Porta-Rinx ice skating rinks, made similar allegations.
Nelson denied the claims. He said he stopped doing business with Mcafee because she was "more of a headache than she was worth." And he said the portable ice rink was his "intellectual property."
The Vermont Country Store's lawsuit originally named a business associate of Nelson's, Alan Goldman, as a defendant. Goldman registered the name Montpelier Vermont Country Store with the secretary of state's office last year with thoughts of eventually opening a "bricks-and-mortar" store in the capital. The company later agreed to dismiss him from the complaint.
Goldman owns two downtown Montpelier commercial buildings, as well as property in Barre, Waitsfield and Plainfield. In January, he locked four nonprofit groups out of their Montpelier offices in a rent-related dispute.
Contact Peter Crabtree at peter.crabtree@rutlandherald.com.
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