I've been following this since it started. Here is the Reader's Digest condensed version:
1 ) Robert Novak, owner of Pets Warehouse, sues 15 aqaurists, a bulletin board owner and their ISP for $15 million for making comments about bad service they received from his company.
2 ) John Benn, a hobbyist and attorney from Alabama sets up a defense fund and website to help the defendants. Several defendants and others post banner ads pointing to the defense fund web site.
3 ) Novak registers Pets Warehouse as a trademark and then amends the first suit to go after Benn, the hobbyists that posted the banner ads and several others for trademark infringement, computer fraud, torious interference, civil conspiracy, product disparagement, defamation, false light, invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, harassment, libel, and trade libel.
4 ) The amendment is rejected by the judge, so Novak re-does the amendment as a new lawsuit. As part of this complaint Novak alleges that Benn has complaints pending against him by the Alabama State Bar Association.
5 ) A couple of people from the first lawsuit and a couple from the second settle because they can't afford to defend themselves.
6 ) Benn sues Novak for libel over the comments in (4) above.
7 ) Novak sues Google, Overture, Kanoodle and three other web sites for unfair competition, trademark dilution, and tortious interference. The complaint is very confused, but it appears that it centers on two issues - someone else's sponsored links coming up when someone searches for "pets warehouse" and Google refusing to remove discussions about the lawsuit from their newsgroups archive.
8 ) Benn wins a $50,000 dollar judgement against Novak. When Novak fails to file a bond, the Colbert County, Alabama sheriff's department directs Tucows (the registrar of the domain) turn over the the domain name "petswarehouse.com" to them for sale at auction to cover the $50,000 settlement. The trademark is siezed as well.
9 ) Novak files for chapter 11 bankruptcy for the 2nd time. Interestingly, he lists several of the people he is sueing as creditors, even though there have been no judgements in those cases yet.
10 ) Novak sues Tucows and the Colbert County sheriffs office for taking his domain name. He claims that his bankruptcy filing places a "stay" on his assets, so they can't take the domain, even though it was siezed prior to the filing.
There are many, many more amazing and appalling details on the web site posted by Richard above.
