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Its funny you should mention Apple...because, while your basic point is correct, many corporations these days just competing in one event, but trying to compete in as many events as they are able to.

This makes the whole issue of Trademarks much more complex, and blurring markets and international exposure increase conflict exponentially. Just take a look at DNS.

Etoys vs Etoy http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/12/29/1538212/
Nissan Motors vs Nissan Computers http://www.ncchelp.org/The_Story/the_story.htm/

Back to Apple. Apple dont just make computers anymore. Now they're a multinational and a major player in multimedia, including distribution and publishing.

Apple vs The Beatles http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/27/1135251/

If its just Bob's Printer Ink thats one thing... but now its Bob's Printer Ink / Media / Car Tyres / MP3 Players and GlobalNewsNetwork (tm) all rolled into Bob's Megacorp... if you happen to run Bob's Fresh Juice..even if you've been trading for 30 years...you're in for a fight...and the lawyers win again.

This may pose a problem with the 526,000+ people sharing the name Michael Smith.

Or the people who share names with companies. Or the people who share names with each other. There will be collisions. This plan will not work for its stated purpose. However, its stated purpose and its real purpose most likely are not the same. Odds are, this is just another plan to make more money for the registrars by opening up a new land rush of domain name registrations.

I fully agree with you.

A very good example of a legitimate company forced into submission is the Nissan.com case. I encourage you to read it and be outraged at the injustice.
http://www.ncchelp.org/
http://www.linksandlaw.com/decisions-141-nissan.ht m

The grandparent post is referring to this: http://www.ncchelp.org/The_Story/the_story.htm. It boils down to Nissan Motors bullying a private individual, with the last name Nissan, who registered nissan.com while Nissan Motors where still operating under the name "Datsun".

I completely agree with you on your post. Especially this:

If the owner of the site actually WAS Fallwell (regardless of the content), or was a business with that name but in an unrelated industry (first come first serve in cases of conflict I'd say)

However, not always the case. One should only look as far as www.nissan.com.

Uzi Nissan has run self-named businesses in the United States for decades. When Mr. Nissan started Nissan International, Nissan Motors was known in the US as "Datsun". From the success of Nissan International, he created Nissan Computers. In 1994, he registered the domain name "www.nissan.com".

You can probably guess what happened. SIX years later, Nissan Motors sued Mr. Nissan for $10 million. But, the Nissan is the guy's name and the name of his business. He used the name in the US longer than Nissan Motors did. He is in a completely unrelated industry. He registered a trademark with the Nissan name a decade ago, years before the lawsuit. Slam dunk for Mr. Nissan, right?

Wrong.

While Nissan Motors didn't get their $10 million and lost most of their claims, there's no question that Nissan Motors won the case in every sense of the word. You can read more about it here

Mr Nissan registered the site http://www.nissan.com/ for his computer business. Nissan Motors came along later, and put up enough of a legal struggle, that Mr. Nissan had to change his website, so that it cannot be used for commerical purposes, namely, Mr. Nissan's computer shop. The whole story is here --> http://www.ncchelp.org/The_Story/the_story.htm/

You mean like Uzi Nissan?

Read more here.

Yeah.

Tell that to Uzi Nissan.

Ok, here's what you do when someone (like MS) says "here's $10, fork over the domain!"

Ready? It's really easy.

Tell them to "go fuck themself." Don't quote figures, don't say anything other than "go fuck yourself". Then they have to prove you're a squatter, bad-faith, etc. Which they really can't because A) the site (now slashdotted tot he ninth level of Hell) has content expected to exist on such a site; and B) his given birth name is the name he chose for the domain--something even MS can't deny.

Problems...you betcha! Just read the sad tale of Uzi Nissan. So your given name is not the protected thing you may think...it's all about deep pockets. But with luck you can win.

Personally, I would never have gone with the "-soft" on the end of the domain. But that's me.

Sorry, i should have included this in the previous message. Here is Uzi's page of information regarding his case vs Nissan Corp.

http://www.ncchelp.org/The_Story/the_story.htm.

"I am motivated to stick with what I believe in."

And so he should. It would seem Microsoft has no choice but to back down as, legally, it doesn't have a hope in hell of winning and there are plenty of lawyers out there who would love to get a win against Microsoft under their belt.

I think if he does get enough support, he probably should fight back. But it brings another case of the Nissan.com domain to me in which the domain name can't be used commercially.

What I thought was very interesting about the case was mentioned in the FAQ to the Nissan.com case. It said

1. As of June 12th 2000 there are (2223) domain names registered on the Internet containing the word nissan in them. To the best of our knowledge, most of those domains are not owned by Nissan Motor Co. Click here to view a partial list of them.
2. Also here is another list with nissan as the first word of the domain name there are (860 ) of them Click here to view. If you wish to see which entity owns any particular listing, just click on the WHOIS link next to it.

In the www.MikeRoweSoft.com case the interpretion is weaker as the similarity is "phonetic" which is really quite fuzzy, compared to the actual presence of the word "nissan" in the domain name. Despite this the original owner of the Nissan.com domain could not prevail.

If you go to the website Nissan.com you see the following Notice: In compliance with a ruling issued by the United States District Court in Los Angeles on November 14, 2002, in the lawsuit of Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. v. Nissan Computer Corporation, this web site has been converted to non-commercial use.

The story from the Domain Name Handbook was

1. Japanese automaker Nissan Motors Co., Ltd. and Nissan North America, Inc. filed suit against Nissan Computer Corp., a North Carolina-based corporation since 1991 with a registered trademark for its name.
2. Uzi Nissan, an Israeli-American born in Jerusalem, registered NISSAN.COM in 1994 to expand his computer business and NISSAN.NET two years later to expand his ISP business.
3. In August 1999, he posted a logo similar to that of Nissan Motor Corp, and began promoting automobile-related products and services.
4. The automaker filed suit for trademark dilution on December 10, 1999. The court granted a preliminary injunction and held that Mr. Nissan is trading on the automaker's goodwill and diverting potential Nissan car customers to other websites.
5. He was ordered to post a prominent disclaimer of any connection to Nissan Motor Corp and refrain from displaying any auto-related information.

So, I guess, I could see something like this happen. Mike Rowe may be ordered to post a prominent disclaimer of any connection to Microsoft Corp and refrain from displaying any computer-related information. IANAL.

Nissan (the car company) sued Uzi Nissan (a technology company owner) to get his website. They [car corp] "lost" in the sense that they didn't get the domain name, but they convinced the court to totally neuter it: it cannot host any commercial content, nor can it link to any site that hosts commercial content.

Or Microsoft could just sue you out of there. That what Nissan did to Nissan Computer Company

Meanies.

Careful you spell your name right, nissin, else someone may come knocking on your door.

Nissan are those fucks who stole an American business man's computer website.

Nissan Motors has an extremely weak case but have managed to manipulate and strong arm the courts (and apparantly in a different situation, in the state of Missisipi) to suit their interests at the expense of individuals. I, for one, will never patronize Nissan. Of course, if my goal is to avoid greedy, corrupt, heavy handed automotive companies I think that leavs me driving either a Mini, a moped or a vehicle powered by soy. Nix the Mini. Their site uses flash... ;-)

Uzi was born with the last name of Nissan and put his computer company's website at the place which made sense nissan.com. Nissan, however was not always Nissan but Datsun. It changed its name to Nissan in 1987.

The full sad story is here.

Other articles are here and here.

.name is a true indicator of consumer demand for domain names, although its a flawed model because these domains cost four times what a ".com" domain goes for, and are plagued by spam and other problems.

Unless there is a restriction that no one company can own ".com", ".org", ".biz" and ".info" domains all with the same name then this sort of TLD expansion is just a tax imposed on business by trademark attornies and domain name registrars.

No, quite the contrary. Recently, Nissan motors seems to have gained ground.

See the updates at his update site.

According to udpates at the bottom of this page, things aren't going so well for Uzi Nissan.

The latest:

September 2002

The previous court rulings did not end this case. Nissan Motors filed a second Motion for Summary Judgment trying (and has been successful) to get the Court to deprive me of the right to a jury trial on October 15, 2002. The Court, much to my surprise, changed its attitude on this issue and:

1. Changed the relevant date for "fame" from 1991 to 1994.

2. Found that no reasonable jury could find that Nissan was not famous by 1994.

3. Found that Nissan Computer and The Internet Center diluted Nissan Motor's trademark.

4. Found that the publication of information about this lawsuit, the comments made by many people -- on this www.ncchelp.org and my media campaign to bring this issue to the public, actually -- tarnished Nissan Motor's trademark.

Many legal experts view our case, not as a "law-breaking" case, but as a "law-making" case. The Court indicated during the hearing on this motion that certain aspects of this case may be creating new law as well.

The trial date has thus been taken off calendar and Nissan Motor is now asking the Court to take away my domain name from me entirely. We expect a ruling on this motion some time in November this year. Our legal team is evaluating our options, which evaluation can not be completed until we know the final ruling by the Court. We believe that the potential loss of our domain name in this fashion may set the wrong precedent for future cases and will open the door for any deep-pocket corporation to do the same. This may become "the law of the land" and may affect many others in a similar situation, it could affect you or someone you know.

This case received the attention of CBS Evening News, and has been looked at by other news agencies that have not yet published stories about it. Public attention to this type of corporate behavior is most important to get the issues properly debated. Your emails were very successful in CBS Evening News' decision to run a short story on this case. We are asking for your continued and crucial support by sending an email to the media and stating the importance of bringing these facts to the public. Remember that it was Public Opinion and Awareness that ended the Soviet Union, not missiles. Together we can make a difference.

From some of his actions, it sounds like he tried to capitalize upon this and started putting car ads, etc, on his site.

Read his side of the story. He had a Nissan Foreign Car Mobile Repair Service since 1980, before the introduction of the Nissan Motors brand name. So logically some of his visitors might be interested in foreign car parts. And look at his site. He has a pointer to NissanDriven.com (which redirects to nissanusa.com) at the top. IMO Uzi Nissan is being a good netizen and despite the biases of some reporters, if you examine the facts it's hard to spin it any other way.

We reply: Nissan Motors' official, Mr. Merril Davis, who initiated contact with us and traveled to North Carolina in October 1999 and MR. Nissan told him then that the domain name is not for sale. He contacted Mr. Nissan and traveled again to NC on December 10th 1999, at this time he was prompted by their lawyers (Mr. Nissan did not know it then but after Mr. Merril Davis's deposition was taken it was known) to entrap Mr. Nissan to give him a price for the domain. After more then 2 hours Mr. Nissan got tired of him asking for a price, and said "$15 MILLION, DO YOU UNDERSTAND NOW THAT I DO NOT WANT TO SELL?". That was it, he went outside and made a phone call, 5 minutes later, an 86 pages of lawsuit papers started printing on our fax, it takes weeks to prepare an 86 Pages complaint. So NO, we did not demand $15 million, Mr. Nissan's stand was and is, "The domain name is not for sale.

That's from a Q&A at this page. Personally that sounds like a big old pile of bullshit. I'm sure this guy was rubbing his hands ready to make a windfall off of nissan.com. To say that "$15 million" was just some random number is ludicrous, and I'm sure it was the plan all along. As I mentioned in another email: The overwhelmingly majority of people typing nissan.com into their browser are looking for Nissan Motors, not some dinky little computer store in nowheresville.

What makes it worse is that he's from Israel.

The only time I never used preview, and the first time a mistake caught me out.

is that .

What a name to be stuck with!

In 1995, the Nissan Motor Company noticed that this "Internet" thingy was catching on and they may as well jump on too. Upon attempting to register the obvious domain, they found Uzi had beaten them to it.

Around 2000, the Nissan Motor Company commenced legal proceedings. Read Uzi's story here.

So far, Uzi still has control of the domain name, but for how long remains to be seen.

The moral of this story? Be careful to ensure that when you register your surname as a domain name that it isn't already a business name. Confused yet?

And if that domain name is already taken by an individual it should simply be taken away?

Obviously a lot of companies think so; see this bit about Nissan Motor vs. Nissan Computer Company. "Nissan" happens to be a Hebrew word as well as whatever it means in Japanese. Uzi Nissan named various businesses after himself before Datsun changed it's name to Nissan Motors. And he registered nissan.com for Nissan Computer Corp in 1994. Now it appears that the Japanese carmaker has discovered the internet and wants nissan.com. They are 7 years too late -- if there is any consistency to the WIPO's decisions at all.