You know I hate to see Columbus businesses mess up. But it looks like Columbus based DSW has a PR nightmare on its hands.

Yesterday, DSW filed suit against online shoe retailer Zappos alleging that Zappos and it’s agents have infringed DSW’s service marks. The PR trouble is multiple.

1) The entity that allegedly infringed the service marks is an affiliate of Zappos, not Zappos itself. In Internet parlance, an affiliate is basically someone that puts a link to an online store and gets a commission whenever someone that clicks that link buys from the online store.

2) According to Zappos’ CEO, DSW never informed Zappos of their problem, and just sued them. Which is a perfectly valid move, except that …

3) Zappos has a HUGE Twitter presence and a HUGE fan base. DSW, your move strikes these folks as:

a) a PR stunt given that you just launched your competing online shoe site, and

b) a douchebag move given your lack of trying to work things out in advance.

Worse yet, there was a guy on Twitter with the screen name of, ugh, SEOColumbus (account since deleted) that bashed Zappos. Turns out, SEOColumbus was associated with DSW.

Run a search on Summize.com for Zappos and DSW. You’ll see that the masses are outraged and pledge to buy from Zappos and not DSW. That hurts.

Is there any way for DSW to contain the onslaught of bad PR? Perhaps some of my PR friends on Twitter can chime in. I for one have shopped at DSW and hope to continue shopping there. It’s just hard to see a Columbus business miscalculate so badly. It makes us all look like yokels. Like when Skybus went bust.

And if I may interject one more comment. For Pete’s sake, if you’re going to try to covertly muck up the social network world, please use another name that doesn’t sully our region’s name.

Update: Here’s the DSW complaint if you’re so inclined to read.

dsw-v-zappos-complaint