As we all know, Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion is proposing a carbon tax, which he calls The Green Shift.  There is a company that has been in operation for years called Green Shift Inc that is suing the Liberals for using the name without permission.

But one is "Green Shift" and the other is "The Green Shift", or so argue Liberal Party apologists.

Perhaps it is a significant distinction, but only if the Liberals actually use it.  So what does it mean when Stephane Dion directs people to the website for Green Shift Inc, instead of the party's website for The Green Shift carbon tax?

To me it means that Green Shift Inc boss Jennifer Wright has a point when she says that the names are causing confusion, which is why she needs relief from the courts to force the Liberals to change the name and to pay for damages.

Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion met with the editorial board of the Whig-Standard.  For the first time, Stephane Dion seemed prepared well enough to speak of actual numbers associated with his carbon tax plan:

Goodwin:But I also need to get them to day care.

Dion:You are telling me, "Yes, I want to do the right thing but I want to pay my bills at the end of the month." The carbon tax at $40 a tonne of CO2 will cost on average for a Canadian family, in direct cost -that means your energy and electricity -$250. If you have natural gas, the average Canadian household using natural gas purchases approximately 3,500 cubic metres of natural gas each year. The Green Shift in year one will increase the cost to your family to $66 for the full year. In year four, when the carbon tax will be at $40 a ton, the maximum will be $266. [With an average income of $60,000 and two children], you will have $1,350 in tax cuts on the fourth year of the plan. So we have said $266 of direct cost, $1,350 of tax cuts, use it well to retrofit your home and you will not pay the $266.  You have the possibility to get the exact number if you go to greenshift.ca -- there is a calculator there which will give you the exact amount of money you would have in tax cuts. It's very, very good for families because you have more costs when you have kids.

Here's the screenshot (click to enlarge):

So go to the calculator at greenshift.ca?

Really?

Um, greenshift.ca is the URL for the website of Green Shift Inc.

The Liberal Party website is at thegreenshift.ca.

This is a big deal.  A major argument behind the lawsuit is that people will become confused and think that Green Shift Inc is somehow associated with the Liberal Party.  A Liberal counter argument is that the URLs are different.  One has "the" in front of "greenshift".

But which one is which? 

If Stephane Dion can't get it right, how many other Liberals are getting it wrong when telling Canadians to check out the website?  How many people, unaware of the fight between the Liberal Party and Green Shift Inc, are going to Jennifer Wright's site as per Stephane Dion's suggestion and assuming that her site is the Liberal Party website.

This is at the heart of the lawsuit.  It is about the Liberals essentially laying claim to something that is not theirs.  When Stephane Dion tells people that the Liberals have published policy information at Jennifer Wright's website, by accident or not, Jennifer Wright and her company are associated by the Liberal Party in the minds of people who visit the URL Stephane Dion quoted.  That is the association that Jennifer Wright says is not welcome, the association she wants broken and is willing to sue to have broken, an association that Stephane Dion has just made stronger.

Some Liberals insist that Jennifer Wright ought to be grateful at the chance to be associated with the Liberal Party, as if she has won a valuable prize of some sort:

The Liberal Green Shift domain name, www.thegreenshift.ca, was available and was registered. The for-profit Green Shift company was notified in advance. It got a ton of hits. It has received non-stop national publicity. Millions of people who never knew it existed, do now. This traffic, headlines, notoriety and attention cost the company nothing. To achieve this level of brand recognition would have taken a marketing budget bigger than, I suspect, gross sales.

And now it wants to sue?

Maybe an enterprising journalist should ask the owner, Jennifer Wright, how she votes. I’m betting it ain’t Liberal.

I suppose it follows from that logic (as espoused by Garth Turner) that it doesn't matter if Stephane Dion gets the two URLs mixed up.  It's more traffic for Jennifer Wright, and she ought to be thanking the Liberals for it (though Turner is wrong when he says it's free, as it's likely Wright has to pay for the bandwidth for the surge of visits from people not interested in her company but looking for the Liberal Party website).  I guess we'll have that position tested in court.

Addendum: I just noticed this on the banner for greenshift.ca:

Was that little "TM" always there?  Has the trademark process already initiated by Jennifer Wright been completed?

Update: A person who I would trust to know tells me the trademark indicator has always been there.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 01:26 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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