U.S. Chamber seeks to protect trademarks after hoax

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed a civil suit on Monday against an activist group that staged a media hoax last week seeking to draw attention to the debate over climate change policy.

The activist group, called the "Yes Men," on October 19 issued a press release and held a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., posing as members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and falsely saying the Chamber of Commerce had decided to support climate change legislation currently before the U.S. Congress.

In the suit, filed on Monday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, in Washington, the Chamber accused the group, called the "Yes Men" of misappropriating its trademarks and creating a "fraudulent" web site that was a replica of its web site.

"These acts are nothing less than commercial identity theft masquerading as social activism," the Chamber said in its complaint.

A spokeswoman for the Yes Men could not immediately be reached.

A spokesman for the Chamber broke into the fake news conference and alerted the news media, but Reuters and other outlets had already issued reports. Reuters issued a correction to its report as soon as it confirmed the hoax.

(Reporting by Phil Wahba; editing by Carol Bishopric)