It must be cease-and-desist Friday. Got one from iVillage today. Here it goes:
I write on behalf of iVillage Inc. (“iVillage”) with respect to certain contracts between iVillage and third parties that are posted on your site at www.onecle.com. As the creator of such contracts, iVillage owns the copyright in the contracts. Although these contracts were made public through filings with the Securities Exchange commission, such filings do not eliminate the copyright that iVillage holds in such contracts. As iVillage Inc. has not granted Onecle, Inc. any right to publish, reproduce or distribute these contracts, their inclusion on www.onecle.com is an infringement of
iVillage’s copyrights.We demand that you immediately remove all iVillage contracts from your site. If the contracts are not removed from www.onecle.com by 5:00 pm EST on April 30, 2007, we will be forced to explore all legal options available to us.
We are hopeful that this matter can and will be resolved amicably; however, iVillage Inc. reserves all rights in the event no such resolution is reached.
Sincerely,
Karen A. Greenstein
Vice President, Legal Affairs
Let’s see what the EDGAR Filer Manual says about this matter:
When the EDGAR system has completed the processing of your submission, if it is live and public, it will be transmitted electronically to a number of third parties. (There are some individual documents that are considered non-public which will not be immediately disseminated. They may be subsequently disseminated by the SEC if they meet certain criteria.) Dissemination can often occur within seconds of your transmission. Private companies may post your filing on their websites for public use of their subscribers. The filings are also posted on the SEC’s Public Website.
Well, looks like we have a conflict here. If iVillage is right, then the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is wrong. After all, what else could “Private companies may post your filing on their websites for public use of their subscribers” mean?