By David Laprad
In the age of cybercrime, even the most powerful law firms can find themselves in an impossible position: fighting a battle against an enemy who might not even have a name.
“I come from a relatively large law firm,” says Marcus Chatterton, an intellectual property litigator based in Birmingham, Alabama. “We typically represent businesses, many of them well-resourced. But sometimes, we find ourselves pursuing someone who’s more or less anonymous – a hacker, a scammer – and it feels insurmountable. We might never find out who they are.”
That’s the unconventional twist on the classic David-versus-Goliath narrative. Traditionally, the story pits an underdog against a giant. But in Chatterton’s experience, the modern battlefield often reverses the roles. “We might be Goliath, but we’re up against the anonymity of the internet – and that anonymity is David,” he says.
Chatterton has represented clients in high-stakes patent and copyright infringement cases, some of which follow the traditional David-versus-Goliath dynamic. But he’s increasingly found himself on the other side – defending large businesses from small but disruptive actors who operate behind digital masks.
These bad actors can be nearly impossible to track down. “Are we going to file foreign lawsuits to uncover someone in Kenya or wherever they’re perpetrating internet crimes?” Chatterton asks. “Even when you have resources, that might not be enough.”
Although many of these cases never reach a courtroom, the damage is real. One scenario Chatterton encounters with unsettling frequency involves phishing schemes that imitate legitimate companies.
He offers a hypothetical: “Let’s say there’s a company called Fairwell Living that registers a domain name – fairwellliving.com. Then a scammer comes along and registers fa1rwellliving.com, replacing the ‘i’ with the number ‘1.’ Then they use that domain to send fake emails from addresses like invoices@fa1rwellliving.com.”
What makes these schemes especially dangerous is the level of sophistication. “These actors know enough about their target to replicate email signatures or logos. They’ll send messages to clients claiming the company is changing its payment structure. The company hasn’t been hacked – but its identity has been weaponized.”
In some cases, scammers go even further, creating entire fake storefronts online. Chatterton offers a fictional example involving a midsize company that sells gourmet popcorn. “Someone sets up a fake website advertising the company’s products at a deep discount. It looks legitimate – but it’s a trap. The scammers take orders using stolen credit card information and have the real business ship the products to unsuspecting buyers.”
The criminals might be losing money on the goods, but the real payoff is in harvesting credit card numbers and other sensitive information. “It’s insidious,” Chatterton says. “We’ve filed lawsuits against ‘John Doe’ defendants just to subpoena internet service providers. But often, it’s a wild goose chase.”
Even more damaging are reputational attacks fueled by viral content. Chatterton has handled multiple internet defamation cases in which a client becomes the target of a mischaracterized incident.
“Imagine a case involving someone being accused of racism,” he says. “Suddenly, their personal information is doxed – address, phone number – and people from around the world began bombarding their business with fake reviews, one-star ratings, denial-of-service attacks. Whether the accusation was true or not became almost irrelevant.”
It’s a sobering reality for clients who might assume that money and lawyers will be enough to right a wrong. But in these cases, the usual game plan doesn’t apply.
“You’re facing someone who doesn’t need a defense team and doesn’t show up to court,” Chatterton says. “All they need is a VPN and enough know-how.”
While courts have mechanisms for pursuing anonymous defendants, such as John Doe lawsuits and expedited discovery requests, these legal tools often fall short when time is of the essence or when bad actors are operating outside U.S. jurisdiction, says Chatterton.
That leaves even well-funded companies and their attorneys in a frustrating position: playing defense against an adversary that thrives in the shadows.
“It’s a different kind of asymmetry,” Chatterton says. “We have the resources and the law on our side, but they have the ability to vanish.”
In the modern legal landscape, Goliath might still be tall. But sometimes, David is nowhere to be found.