Is "coke.ch" A Violation of Coca-Cola's (tm)?

Confused asks: "I own currently in another country a domain called coke.ch which I had registered about two years ago (ch is for the suisse country). I thought at the time of registering the site of doing a site relating to the affects and some information about helping addicted cocaine users since a friend of mine died from it. Right now, the Coca-Cola company is wanting that name from me and have asked some lawyers in Switzerland to take charge of the case. What can I do when I don't think that I did anything wrong? Is there a way to fight this? Any suggestions would be helpful and appreciated." I can understand Coca-Cola wanting to protect their trademark, but is this going too far? (Read More)

"The word 'coke' in French refers to the drug cocaine ... and the words 'du pepsi' and 'du coca' are used for ordering soda such as Coca-Cola over there. So I registered 'coke' thinking that it was OK to use since the work coke doesn't refer to the Coca-Cola company over in Switzerland."

Let's face it folks...the word "coke" is slang. It's been a slang representation for both "Coca-Cola" and "cocaine" for as long as I can remember. Does a corporation have the right to trademark such slang? And if a word is trademarked before its inadvertent use in common language, what then? Must we all prefix a "(tm)" after using the word coke(tm) even if when we use the word coke(tm) we are not referring to what was trademarked, but the slang version?

This is yet another case that might call for third-party resolution. As near as I can tell, this domain was not registered or used in bad faith. Therefore, as I understand it, Coca-Cola shouldn't have any rights to the domain. Or have I missed something?

Thoughts?

Comments

Re: In US and new registration

[CodeShark]

Well, to be accurate, it was registered by someone who is now living in the US, and the "The domain has not really been registered that long either" comment isn't necessarily true either.

The date listed is the "date of last registration", which means that the domain name owner was last registed on July 5, 1999 -- which could have been a renewal. (Not sure, my own domains aren't up for renewal yet.)

An Offtopic suggestion

[DonkPunch]

Several (most?) of the "Ask Slashdot" questions I've seen lately involve legal issues better suited for attorneys and legal scholars.

This site is targeted at "nerds" -- apparently the technical/computer kind. What good are legal questions in such a forum? I can count on one hand the number of real attorneys I've seen posting on this site in the past. Of those, I only see a few still posting these days (where did you go, Hawk? :)

Questions like this tend to elicit a lot of knee-jerk emotionalism, a lot of "IANAL, but I think my Business Law I professor once said....", and a frightening amount of uninformed or just bad advice. Worse yet, some of the bad advice gets moderated up, perhaps giving an impression of credibility. As proof, I offer a recent copyright-related story in which a highly-scored post suggested a "poor man's copyright" -- mailing yourself a registered letter with the song inside. Five minutes of research will show that this is a popular legal myth.

I often find a lot of good technical information in "Ask Slashdot", but I consider these diversions into legal matters to be somewhat pointless at best. At worst, they are dangerous. Woe be to the person who follows a course of action based on what they read on Slashdot. They may well find themselves on the losing end of a lawsuit. I don't think, "The guy on Slashdot said it was ok," is a defense most judges would honor.

For this reason, I ask the Slashdot editors to please reconsider the number of law-related "Ask Slashdot" articles. Technical questions may not generate as many comments, but they may provide more useful information. You have an audience of technical professionals, not lawyers (although I'm sure some of them are honest-to-goodness attorneys).

For those who are considering posting to "Ask Slashdot" for legal advice, I urge you to find a real attorney instead.

Thanks for your time. Now back to the peanut gallery.

Re:No website...must not be serious

[Selivanow]

Ok, now I know this may be news to a lot of people, but there were things such as "The Internet" and "Domains" before "The Web". Just because someone owns a domain and doesn't have a web site on it doesn't mean that the person isn't using it for other reasons. I can register "kt.com" and use it for telnet, ftp or whatever. If there is a company called "Kt, inc." they shouldn't be able to take away my domain JUST because there isn't a web site up on it. (Sure they MAY have other rights to it, if of course they don't do something like registering kt-inc.com after I registered my domain)

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all the more reason for TLD enforcement

[ChristTrekker]

All the more reason to move to national TLD's across the board. Duke it out in your own country if you want. Coca-Cola is an America company, and as such, couldn't say diddly squat about something in the Swiss TLD.

Either that, or open up those new seven TLD's that have been talked about forever. Heck even they could be under a national 2-letter TLD. Big corporations are bullying the web too much.

There are only so many reasonable domain names available, and LOTS of people that want to use them. There is going to be name collision across TLD's. Face it. If every trademark owner has to buy up their trademark names in every TLD, there'll be nothing left for anyone else to use! You might as well eliminate the current TLD's then and go to www.coke, or www.pepsi, or www.nike! Having various TLD's is supposed to allow for exactly the kind of thing they are trying to squelch!

Trademark law needs to be updated to handle this exact situation. And big corporations need to get their hands off domain registration policy-making.