Archive for the ‘trademark’ Category
Trying to get a domain name that existed before your trademark.
I’m a big supporter of intellectual property rights. Unfortunately I’m stuck writing more often about lawyers and companies that overstep their bounds.
The latest case: Smart Tax Holdings, LLC. The company filed a federal lawsuit (pdf) against Marchex for the domain name SmartTax.com.
The plaintiff started using the name “Smart Tax” in 2006 and filed a trademark on it. The trademark was granted in November 2008.
SmartTax.com was originally registered in 2000. It was part of the Ultimate Search portfolio later acquired by Marchex.
So Marchex has owned the domain name since well before Smart Tax Holdings, LLC even started using the Smart Tax term. Yet its lawyer has the gall to write this:
Defendant has not used Plaintiff’s mark coincidentally, but rather chose to associate Plaintiff’s mark with its own website for the sole purpose of unfairly steering traffic thereto.
How can you suggest that a company is “unfairly steering traffic” to a domain name it owned many years before you existed?
© DomainNameWire.com 2011.
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Company behind Cydia app directory files lawsuit.
After losing a dispute under the uniform domain name dispute resolution policy (UDRP) in March, a jailbreak iPhone app store has filed a lawsuit in an effort to get the domain name Cydia.com.
Saurikit, LLC has a directory of apps that work on jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches that it hosts at cydia.saurik.com. It also has a U.S. trademark for “Cydia”.
Earlier this year it filed a UDRP to get Cydia.com. The UDRP panel ruled against Saurikit, noting that the domain name was registered six years before Saurikit started using the name Cydia.
The company’s in rem lawsuit against the Cydia.com domain name alleges that the owner of the domain name changed the content of the page from a parked page to one about Apple products after it contacted him.
Although the lawsuit (pdf) goes through details of the plaintiff’s communications with the domain owner, it strangely omits discussion about its domain name arbitration loss.
© DomainNameWire.com 2011.
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Related posts:
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This isn’t a very smart thing to do.
If you’re going to register a domain name including a famous trademark, you probably shouldn’t brag about it. Like this guy did [update: removed link. Guy took post down. He also has a new post up that says "I recently decided it was time to migrate my personal blog away from this business as my view points at times can be a bit controversial."] after registering Starbucks.im.
I recently picked up a few good .im top level domain names including starbucks.im. Though this particular domain extension represents the county code top level domain of the Isle of Man in Western Europe, this domain name is quickly getting picked up by companies wanting to offer instant message services as well as a great domain to describe who you are.
It’s pretty easy to prove bad faith when you register a domain if you tell the world.
.IM has its own ccTLD dispute policy outside of UDRP. So if Starbucks wants this domain it can probably just follow that process. Or heck, it can sue the guy in the U.S. where he’s based.
But my guess is a nice cease & desist letter and a cup of hot coffee would do the trick.
(Hat tip Nick Braak)
© DomainNameWire.com 2010.
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Related posts:
- New Top Level Domain Trademark Frontrunning Battle Heats Up
- Ethos.com sells for $27,778 at Afternic
Company sues other company over trademark…while it has Apple’s trademark in its domain name.
From The Las Vegas Sun comes news of a lawsuit filed by the owner of Macpokeronline.com against the owner of macpoker.com and macpoker.net.
Best Odds Corp., owner of the macpokeronline.com, filed the suit claiming MacPoker.com and MacPoker.net infringe on its trademark for Mac Poker.
A trademark for Mac Poker? Yep. Best Odds Corp has been working to get this approved for a while. In the most recent struggle, Best Odds didn’t want to have a disclaimer of the descriptive word “Poker” in its trademark. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office disagreed.
But here’s the bigger issue. Best Odds Corp might be upset about a competitor using a better domain name than it owns. Yet it could be drawing some unwanted attention from Apple, which owns the mark for Mac. I think Apple might not be pleased to have its brand associated with gambling. So it’s somewhat ironic to sue someone over trademark infringement when you may be infringing yourself.
© DomainNameWire.com 2009.
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