[CapitalistCartr]

"Conklin's missive raises an interesting point: Do businesses (or individuals for that matter) have any control over what's published or said about them on third-party directory sites? And do businesses have control over the phone numbers being represented to the public?"

Yes, when its a material misrepresentation of the facts. Putting up a false phone number for a company is not only unethical, its fraudulent. To me, the element that makes the deceitful nature of their actions clear is that they didn't contact the business owner first.

[pbhjpbhj]

It's "passing off" a slightly weaker part of trademark law. They are pretending to the public that their service is that of someone else.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passing_off - written from the UK perspective, it's certainly part of EU TM law too, but I don't know enough about US TM law to comment properly on this.