Diamond retailer De Beers is targeting Joker.com, the Swiss domain name registrar that is hosting the fake New York Times' Web site, because an ad in the fake Web site suggests the company's policies have prompted violence against Africans caught up in the diamond conflict.

When copies of a fake New York Times and an accompanying Web site started making the rounds on the morning of November 12, many people believed that the move would result in a legal firestorm from the newspaper.

"Iraq War Ends!" the main headline screamed. Save for the July 4, 2009 dateline and the improbable content, the real and fake versions were virtually indistinguishable.

Two weeks later, however, the fake paper's Web site at www.nytimes-se.com remains intact, and the real New York Times referred to the prank as a "Grade-A caper."

Not everyone was amused, however. Diamond retailer De Beers is targeting Joker.com, the Swiss domain name registrar that is hosting the fake New York Times' Web site, because an ad in the fake Web site suggests the company's policies have prompted violence against Africans caught up in the region's diamond conflict.

"Your purchase of a diamond will enable us to donate a prosthetic for an African whose hand was lost in diamond conflicts," reads a tagline displayed below a picture of a disembodied prosthetic hand reaching for the hand of a woman sporting a glittering diamond ring.

The use of the De Beers name constitutes trademark infringement, according to the company. De Beers said it is targeting Joker.com instead of Harold Schweppes, the owner of the fake newspaper Web site, because it could not locate Schweppes.

"We have not been able to identify any individual named Harold Schweppes, and it appears that the address '80 Infinity Place, Son of Triumph, Pennsylvania' appears to be entirely made up," Brian McGinley, a partner with Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, wrote in a November 19 letter to Joker.com. "As a result we believe that Joker.com should immediately disable the offending Web site and cancel the registration."

The fake De Beers ad is "offensive, disparaging, damaging, and inaccurate," according to McGinley, and the company "will not hesitate to take appropriate action to protect is valuable name and goodwill."

De Beers did not elaborate on what that action might entail. McGinley did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Though Son of Triumph, Pa. may not exist, Harold Schweppes does, and he is being represented by the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, which argues that the fake paper is clearly parody and that use of the De Beers name is fair use. "De Beers is demanding that Joker.com disable Mr. Schweppes' domain name based on De Beer's alleged belief that the Web site associated with that domain name contains materials that infringe De Beers' trademark," EFF attorney Corynne McSherry, wrote in a Tuesday letter to McGinley. "These threats are improper and baseless and we demand that you withdraw them immediately."

"Courts have noted that nominative fair uses are particularly likely to be found in parodies," according to McSherry. The U.S. Trademark Act is irrelevant, she wrote, because www.nytimes-se.com is "fully noncommercial; it neither offers for sale nor even links to advertising for any actual goods or services."

Even if there was some sort of infringement liability, De Beers should target Schweppes, not Joker.com, McSherry continued. Joker.com is also protected by a section of the Communications Decency Act, which protects Internet intermediaries from the actions of their customers, she wrote.