Ford Motor Company has officially and unconditionally conceded its complete, utter, and perpetual loss on the merits of the FORD v. 2600 "FuckGeneralMotors.com" case. Ford has dismissed its appeal to the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, meaning that Ford has completely given up all attempts to reverse the victory that 2600 Enterprises won on December 20, 2001. The mutually agreed dismissal papers were officially entered by the Sixth Circuit on June 27, 2002.

In the words of another FORD from Michigan -- former President Gerald Ford, "Our long national nightmare is over."

2600, which has given up nothing other than an extremely improbable claim for getting its attorneys' fees back from FORD, has expressly reserved the right to point "FuckGeneralMotors.com" anyplace whatsoever that 2600 pleases -- including at the FORD homepage -- at any time whatsoever, with or without notice.

Of course, the plan in March, 2001, when the lawsuit arose, was to point the address someplace more suitable than the FORD homepage, probably as soon as mid-April or early May, 2001. In other words, the lawsuit has actually delayed 2600's prior plans (several other domain names that were part of the same project have been re-pointed several times, while FuckGeneralMotors.com has remained pointed at FORD). Now that the lawsuit has been won, 2600 will be soliciting suggestions during the H2K2 conference, for the best place to point the Domain Name. Ultimately, this just proves how silly and counterproductive FORD's litigation strategy always has been from the beginning.

In December, 2001, Judge Robert Cleland of the Eastern District of Michigan, dismissed FORD's lawsuit in its entirety for "failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted" -- which means that even assuming every single allegation in FORD's pleadings to be true (but the allegations weren't all true), FORD still had no legal right whatsoever to prohibit 2600 from pointing FuckGeneralMotors.com at FORD's homepage.

Needless to say, FORD did not like that outcome. Neither did a lot of other intellectual property interests all over the world. Indeed, a google search will reveal a number of PowerPoint(tm) presentations published on the Web (e.g., http://austlii.edu.au/ hkitlaw/resources/Pun_IP.pdf) by various intellectual property lawyers, emphasizing that the decision is being appealed. Well, now it isn't.

The decision stands. It is published at 177 F. Supp. 2d 661. And it is binding precedent. The decision has even been cited by the Sixth Circuit already, in an interim order that was issued in the "TaubmanSucks" case handled by Paul Levy of Public Citizen. http://www.citizen.org/documents/TaubDecision-3-11-02.pdf .

When FORD filed its appeal to the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in January, 2002, FORD sought to have the case reinstated so that FORD could take it to trial. 2600 filed a cross-appeal, solely on the issue of whether FORD should be required to reimburse 2600 for its legal bills (such fee awards, in cases under the Lanham Trademark Act, are not especially common and occur only in "exceptional" cases -- so the Sixth Circuit was likely to defer to Judge Cleland's decision to award 2600 its "costs" but not its attorneys' fees). 2600 still gets to take its "costs" back from FORD, and our lawyer is preparing to serve a deposition notice on Bill Ford, to gather the information necessary to garnish FORD's bank accounts, unless FORD cuts us a reimbursement check forthwith.

But the key point is that 2600's victory is permanent and FORD has voluntarily foregone any appeals. The savings, in terms of attorneys' fees, from our standpoint, are enormous.