Miqati’s Façonnable Files Lawsuit in Denver over Web Posts Linking it to Hizbullah

Façonnable, a high-end retailer of shirts, has filed a lawsuit against anonymous Internet users who wrote statements on its Wikipedia page linking the company to Hizbullah.

In the lawsuit filed last week in federal court in the U.S. city of Denver, Façonnable says the users edited the company's Wikipedia page in March to suggest that the firm supports the Shiite party.

Façonnable is owned by the M1 Group, a Lebanese conglomerate co-founded by Premier-designate Najib Miqati.

"Repeated publication of the defamatory statements on Wikipedia are causing, and will continue to cause, damage to the Façonnable brand," the lawsuit states.

The Internet users are currently named in the suit as John Does, and Façonnable says in its complaint that part of the reason for filing the lawsuit is to try to identify them.

The complaint was filed in Denver because Façonnable traced the Wiki-hackers' computer addresses back to Skybeam Inc., an Internet service provider based in the town of Berthoud near Denver.

An effort by Façonnable to get the names directly from Skybeam was met with a terse reply.

"Information like this would need to be requested through a summons delivered by a local law enforcement agency," Skybeam wrote to an official from Façonnable's parent company.