Please Support Paul Dell

Paul Dell is being sued by Dell Computers for lots of money. His crime? Using his own given name in conjunction with what he does for a living. Paul creates web sites. His domain name describes this perfectly -- http://www.dellwebsites.com/. Let's help stop this corporate ridiculousness. Help Paul fight and win. Next time, it may be you the giant comes after.

Paul Dell is a great guy. We know because we're his friends. And we wouldn't be friends with a jerk. :) Paul's really going through it right now and maybe you can help. It could be you or I next time unless we put an end to this kind of ridiculous beating up of the small guy without deep pockets.

You can read more history of this fight at the following links -- especially Kieran McCarthy's article at the Register from January 2005.
Fleeting Epiphanies blog post
D-mode blog post


Meanwhile, here is an update to that part of the story.

Paul has been summoned to appear before the Tribunal de Grande Instance Paris. Dell Computers is suing him -- not just to get the domain name from him, but also 100,000 Euro in damages to Dell America, 50,000 Euro to Dell France. They have also have ordered him to pay each Dell Company 40,000 Euro as well as 500 Euro for every presence of the word Dell on his site.

Dell claims he has committed acts of parasitism and of unfair competition to the detriment of the American company Dell INC and the French company Dell, and its commercial name: Dellhost as well as its domain names: dell.fr and dellhost.fr. I guess Paul is pretty scary to a big company like that. He has such an unfair advantage -- especially in size. ;)

We have encouraged (yes, even begged) Paul to fight. But the legal costs from this initial period alone will cost him more than a new car. We've finally convinced him to accept donations to help cover the fees.

Paul is accepting donations by PayPal. You can go to his donation page for the donation link.

http://www.dellwebsites.com/donations.html

These will only be used to fight this huge fight. As a token thanks, he is making available to anyone who makes a donation, his Sunflowers website template. The download link will be included in your thank you note. (Please keep any comments about the case clean. We don't need any more problems from Dell Computers.)

Paul thanks you very much for your support. And as his friends, so do we.

Posted 2/16/2006 @ 5:39 PM | Miscellaneous