Eric Menhart is still making people mad.

It used to be just e-mail spammers who were upset with him, back when he was a George Washington University student suing them under Maryland law. But now that he's a recently sworn-in D.C. technology attorney, he's angering a different crowd: His colleagues.

In December, Menhart applied for trademark rights on the term "cyberlaw," which also happens to be the name of his personal firm. And it caused a lawyerly outcry among the industry's bloggers, who say the well-worn word clearly belongs in the public domain. Attorneys have maligned Menhart's common sense, called his efforts "silly," and questioned his professional abilities.

"We pretty much gang-heckled him," said Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University in California. "People try for the wackiest trademarks all the time, that's not unusual. When a lawyer chooses to do it, that's more interesting. And when a lawyer chooses something goofy, that's really interesting."

Menhart, who is in his late 20s, has responded with a statement on his Web site (www.cyberlaw.pro) justifying the application he filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and complaining about the complaints, particularly what he says are inaccuracies within them. Still this week, he amended the application so it only applies to his company's logo. But he said it's not because of the criticism, which he tried to ignore.

"It was very clear that this was not going to be an academic argument, it was going to be more of a shouting match, and I didn't think it was worth my time to get involved in a shouting match with people that were going to shout louder and had more ammunition in their holsters than I had," Menhart said.

The reason there was such a ruckus is that most seem to see "cyberlaw" as a word that should be free for the using. Trademarking it would be akin to trademarking "Internet" (which a whole bunch of people tried to do back in the early 1990s), according to Menhart's critics.

The term is already used to describe online- and tech-related legal issues in dictionaries and encyclopedias. It appears in dozens of book titles and multiple Web addresses. It's even used to describe law centers at prestigious universities, including Stanford.

"It's been so ubiquitous, it's probably one of the most generic marks I've ever seen," said Iowa attorney Brett Trout. He wrote about the situation on his blog (http:--blog.bretttrout.com) last month and happens to be the author of CyberLaw: A Legal Arsenal for Online Business, which was published last fall.

But Menhart points out that it has been trademarked before: In 1996, a California attorney registered such rights, which expired in 2000, opening the door for a new application.

Menhart's original application asked that he be granted exclusive rights to the term - which he first used commercially a year ago - as it relates to a laundry list of legal services, including "providing information relating to legal affairs." That would have allowed him to sue others if he was granted the trademark.

He's already sent what he called a "friendly letter" to Illinois attorney Michael Grossman pointing out similarities in their blog titles - Grossman's was CyberBlawg, Menhart's is CyberLawg - and asserting his rights to the name.

Grossman declined to comment other than to wish Menhart well. He has changed his blog's name, however, "for a number of reasons," he said.

A few years ago, Menhart made waves as a law student by filing at least nine lawsuits under a Maryland law against alleged e-mail spammers nationwide. He asked for awards of between $3,000 and $168,750. Technology advocates lauded his efforts, while e-mail marketers derided them.

Eventually, one of Menhart's cases led a Montgomery County judge to declare the Maryland law unconstitutional, which was later reversed, but not before the decision made headlines nationwide and Menhart became famous in certain circles. He has taken the notoriety he received from press coverage and turned it into a boutique business, he said Tuesday.

Protecting that business is what was on his mind when he filed for trademark registration, he said.

In the meantime, he has attached the symbol "" to both his firm's name and his blog. It indicates that he treats them as trademarks, but does not specify official rights.

"The notation scares away people who don't know any better. ... It means nothing official," said Ned T. Himmelrich, an attorney with Gordon Feinblatt LLC in Baltimore. Himmelrich had not heard about the cyberlaw flap.

And soon no one may care, once word of Menhart's application amendment makes its way through cyberspace.

"That protection is of significantly less value than owning the word cyberlaw," Goldman said. "It goes from being a very aggressive move to being one that's probably very inconsequential for everybody, including him."

tricia.bishop@baltsun.com