Courts. (Credit: LevittownNow.com)
A left-leaning political nonprofit sued the Pennsylvania Manufacturer’s Association this summer alleging trademark infringement even though the nonprofit would later admit in court it had no proof that a single person was ever confused by the various names or images being used.
The federal lawsuit brought by Better Pennsylvania against the PMA centered on the PMA’s ownership of a website betterpa.org. But testimony at an August hearing revealed that Better PA had never trademarked its name or logo, had no survey or data showing confusion, and could not identify a single donor, voter, or member of the public who had actually been misled.
The episode illustrates the ongoing and sometimes desperate battle, usually out of the public eye, of political entities jockeying for branding in internet and social media spaces, and the lengths to which those groups will go to acquire a shorter internet URL even if that means dragging opponents into expensive and ultimately hollow court battles. PMA’s president said the suit exemplifies a new era of “lawfare” in state politics.
Ultimately the case was decided less on any similarities between imaging and instead the case came down to a simple technicality: copyright and trademark infringement is essentially impotent in the nonprofit world. While the judge acknowledged some superficial similarities, he said the governing law does not apply to noncommercial activity, as was the case with PMA’s website.
“The record shows that PMA made no profit from the use of the domain name at issue. Like Better Pennsylvania’s website, PMA’s website offered only advocacy regarding its ideology. It does not offer or refer to goods or services. Absent commercial activities that are carried out with the intent to generate a profit, the Court holds that Better Pennsylvania is not likely to succeed on the merits” of its claims, federal Judge William S. Stickman IV wrote in his ruling denying a motion for a preliminary injunction.
PMA President David Taylor, was not reserved in the slightest when talking about the suit.
“It cost hundreds of thousands and worth every cent to vindicate our rights against these malicious bastards. Please quote me,” Taylor said.
Given that the URL betterpa.org is owned and used by the PMA, Better PA currently operates a website at the address www.betterforpennsylvania.org.
In the complaint filed in July, Better PA argued that the PMA was “actively promoting a website, hosted at the domain
In addition to naming the PMA as a defendant, Better PA named three association employees as individual defendants as well.
Better PA uses a logo with a keystone outline and something resembling a sunrise in one corner. PMA uses a logo that also has a keystone outline and a machine cog emerging from the same corner, but PMA reserves the use of that logo exclusively to the betterpa.org website.
Further highlighting the contrast between the two groups is the funding and their institutional footprints. Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association has existed for more than a century, and, as the name implies, local businesses contribute dues. Better PA, meanwhile, first came into existence around 2019.
Publicly available IRS filings show that from 2019 through 2024, roughly $7.4 million of Better Pennsylvania’s approximately $9 million in funding came from five national progressive funding organizations, including the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the Tides Foundation, and Hopewell Fund.
Better PA’s executive director, Angela Valvano, also admitted in court that the political nonprofit relied exclusively on grants as opposed to donations for its operations.
Taylor said the website is just another arm of the PMA’s outreach.
“Our website is ‘Make Pennsylvania Better’ and — using Make Pennsylvania better via a better pa.org — we mobilize our conventional growth pro business argument on competitiveness. And at every turn it is very clearly marked that Make Pennsylvania Better is a project of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association. There was never any interest or desire or effort to impersonate the left-wing Soros group,” Taylor said.
Better PA also made allegations that the PMA was “cybersquatting” — when someone owns a web address that appropriates a brand name of a company or product, or a web address that is extremely close to those names.
The small irony is one of the directors for Better PA, J.J. Abbott, has for years run a website at vote.pa, which is extremely close to the Pennsylvania Department of State’s official website, vote.pa.gov.
Abbott’s site is legal and does, in fact, successfully register users to vote.
At the unofficial website vote.pa, Abbott and his team offer users the ability to register to vote using a form available on the page. While the form will, in fact, register a user, it also keeps the user’s contact information. The site’s privacy policy allows it to “use your personal information in connection with our political efforts and activities.”
Commonwealth Communications, the political nonprofit that runs vote.pa, responded to a request for comment, but only through a generic email address, and the response did not identify who was answering.
“vote.pa was registered in 2020 when the state’s official voting and election website was votespa.com, as it had been since at least 2004. The state’s current url is https://www.pa.gov/agencies/vote.”
While it’s not incorrect to say that the commonwealth’s URL ending in /agencies/vote will take a citizen to the official Department of State website, it’s also true that vote.pa.gov is the URL most routinely cited by politicians in get out the vote efforts, as evidenced in this post on X from Gov. Josh Shapiro.
Taylor said a pro-growth political advocate purchased dozens of potentially useful advocacy web URLs in the early days of the internet and later donated the betterpa.org address to PMA. Because the domain was acquired years before Better PA even existed, Taylor said it would be inaccurate to suggest the URL was purchased with the intent of creating confusion between the two groups.
Better PA President Angela Valvano did not respond to a request for comment.
Update: The original version of this article incorrectly said the PMA’s website at betterpa.org used a logo of a keystone with a sun emerging from one corner. In fact, the PMA’s logo has a keystone outline with a machine cog visible in the corner. The article has been changed to reflect this information.
Todd Shepherd is Broad + Liberty’s chief investigative reporter. Send him tips at [email protected], or use his encrypted email at [email protected]. @shepherdreports
