10 Business Ideas That Will Get Your Ass Sued

Ways To Get Your Ass Sued Off While Running a Business

Winding up before a judge in court is never a good sign for your business . . . unless you’re in the legal profession. It can happen to anyone: the underdog, the top cat, the genius, the idiot, the slimy or the squeaky clean. Sometimes you can get sued just for being successful. Here are 10 business ideas (along with real life examples) across the spectrum of possibilities that can pretty much guarantee to land your ass in court.

1. Copy someone else’s idea and name it after them.

This is quite possibly the biggest “duh” in the history of business, but even commercial giants fall prey to the trap. In an effort to capitalize on the success of Pixar, Disney thought it would be a novel idea to sell a lamp that looked just like the famous Luxo lamp that serves as the I in the Pixar logo. They copied the design of the Norwegian company’s lamp and even named it the Luxo, Jr.

Gee, you’d think someone at Disney would have given the people at Luxo the heads up. But they didn’t, and instead they got sued for trademark violation.

2. Innovate

As several items in this list will show, some of the most successful business ideas and entrepreneurs become instant targets for frivolous lawsuits. One of the surest ways to get sued is to come up with an idea with broad appeal and wild success—there’s only so much money to be gained from suing poor people.

Facebook and Twitter have both been sued in separate cases by business claiming to hold patents over the technology and procedures that make the social networks successful. The suit against Facebook is far flimsier than the one against Twitter, but the problem plaguing both defendants is the same: the world of patents is so overwhelmingly flooded, it’s virtually impossible to know if your entrepreneurial genius overlaps with someone else’s half-baked plans.

The lesson: as long as you do your due diligence and don’t steal anyone else’s ideas, you’re probably safe.

3. Ride the coattails of someone else’s success.

When someone makes it colossally big, there are always thousands of underlings who bathe in the excess fame and fortune trickling down. So when J. K. Rowling began selling millions upon millions of books (and raking in millions more in film and merchandising deals) there was plenty of attention to share between fan sites like The Leaky Cauldron. But after the final showdown between Harry Potter and He-Who Must Not Be Named hit bookshelves, She Who Must Not Be Plagiarized filed an injunction to stop The Leaky Cauldron authors from publishing a printed version of their site.

Ms. Rowling had no qualms about the extra promotion and anticipation drummed up by Potter-obsessed sites, but the book that served essentially as a Who’s Who in the Potterverse put a hex on Rowling’s patience. Her counter jinx attempting to block publication of the book, which she viewed as a “regurgitation” of her own work, ultimately won out as RDR Books revised the content drastically under the title, The Lexicon.

Be careful when you ride Ms. Rowling’s coattails (or that of any creative mind). If you come too close to stealing the whole coat, you might get turned into a newt.

4. Burn Someone’s Flesh Off

If your business model results in blistering, it’s time to adjust your approach. But the ruling in a landmark case against McDonald’s showed that a jury found the fast-food giant at fault for failing to make the necessary adjustments and endangering their customers. The most damning evidence was the simple fact that McDonald’s heats its coffee to a temperature 20 degrees higher than its competitors. And as the 81-year-old plaintiff can attest, it’s not a dry heat.

Don’t injure your customers. They’ll get their pound of flesh in court.

5. Use Words and Be Famous

Have you ever heard of Abercrombie & Fitch’s new scent, Fierce? Until she and her Sasha Fierce label were served with court documents, neither had Beyonce. But apparently those scantily clad male models are wearing little more than the scent that shares a name with the diva’s alter ego, and the mere use of that word in eaux de Beyonce’s version constitutes a trade mark violation.

Far less subtle than Disney’s Luxo case, Beyonce is simply using the last name of a character she created. Does an entrepreneur really need to get permission to use their own name on its merchandise? A&F hopes so. But even if they don’t, they’re stealing publicity from Beyonce’s good name. Do we smell counter-suit?

6. Namejacking

For some Internet entrepreneurs, the best way to steal someone’s thunder is to swipe it before lightning strikes. Cybersquatting would-be popular domains attached to celebs, businesses, and misspelled monikers has become an industry of its own. One slight problem: it’s illegal.

Michael Doughney learned the hard way that even a site poking fun at the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals didn’t have the right to steal the PETA.org domain. Doughney’s version was decidedly non-vegan: People Eating Tasty Animals. In a strange twist of fate, Doughney’s defense (that his site was a parody of PETA) fell through on the grounds that it wasn’t imitating PETA enough.

The verdict in this case: choose ethics over taste.

7. Online insults

Poor Amanda Bonnen had no idea her seemingly harmless tweet about mold could cost her upwards of $50,000. But, in the case that launched an raging online legal/PR debate, Bonnen’s mild accusation that Horizon Group Management didn’t care about earned her a brand new lawsuit. Despite the fact that she had just 20 followers, she aroused Horizon’s wrath in under 140 characters.

Imagine what may have happened if she had been a corporate employee? While the real estate developers took the brunt of the negative press, the tables could have easily been turned in the realm of public opinion had the insult been made by a big dog instead of an underdog.

8. Rat on your customers

Same story, different day. The infamous case of Rosemary Port and her skankified rant against Model Liskula Cohen feeds off the momentum of number 7. The courts ruled that Port’s rights to anonymity were outweighed by the guilt of her online libel against Cohen. The enormity of the case, however, was not the judgment that her words were libelous but in Google’s agreement to fork over her identity. Now Port, a blogger who claimed to have an audience of one (one who just happened to be a supermodel), planned to sue the Internet giant for $15 million.

The case has huge implications for the blogging community, but the possible legislation against Google will send shockwaves through the business community as well. If you want to avoid lawsuits, you’ll need to be careful not to promise more legal protection to your customers than you can provide.

9. Change the World with Photo Shop

One of the most indelible images of Obama’s ascent to the White House was, according to the Associated Press, a blatant example of copyright theft. The notorious lawsuits—the artist Shepard Fairey filed a preemptive suit of his own—raised an important legal issue in the age of Photo Shop: what exactly constitutes fair use of an image?

The AP believes the work of art, adapted from an AP photo of Obama, amounts to little more than a glorified “paint-by-number,” a complete rip-off. Shepard, who credited Mannie Garcia the photographer, thinks he was well within the bounds of free expression.

But graphic departments around the world took notice: if you plan on putting your art at the center of the free world, it better be completely original.

10. Eliminate the Competition

A lot of people have business goals. Becoming the richest person in the world would be the pinnacle for just about anyone. Bill Gates obviously was doing something right, which put a lot of less-wealthy folks on edge. The bottom line: Microsoft all but eliminated the competition from the Internet browser game, bringing anti-trust lawsuits in the US and in Europe. Say what you want about Microsoft’s software or even their business ethics—the industry leader consistently put themselves at the forefront of the industry to the point that for years most customers couldn’t even see the competition.

If you’re that good at what you do, the biggest lawsuit in the world can’t even put a dent in your pile of gold. Even if they do sue your ass off, you can afford a new one.

Well, those were some of the ways you can gets your ass sued off while running a business. If you got anything else that you would like to add, feel free to drop a comment.

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