Slashdot Mirror
WIPO Rules Against Sting
FlyingSheep writes "British pop star Sting has lost a case at an international panel to evict the holder of the Internet address sting.com, becoming the first celebrity to suffer such a defeat" This is pretty good news... Words in the dictionary are totally different then, say, JuliaRoberts.com. An interesting stat in the article is that 81% of the WIPO rulings have led to an eviction. Unfortunately the WIPO sided with Microsoft over the Microsof.com domain name: Typo sites should be allowed (and I even get flame mail because of the various Slashdot typo sites!)
Your isolated selections have shown me the light, corporations should not only get their trademarks, but also any possible misspellings. In addition to this, they should also get any nicknames they've ever had, and any slanderous words likely to pertain to them. My .orgs should all be taken away immediately and given to the .coms because obviously i'm attempting to infringe on their trademarks in bad faith.
----------------------------
Not only that, but the guy who owned corinthians.com had been using it legitimately for years - for something related to the book of Corinthians, which has obviously been around a lot longer than the soccer team.
BTW, in case anyone's curious, the book of Corinthians is a letter written by Paul to the church in Corinth (the Corinthian church).
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
This one's kind of lame - it just wraps www.slashdot.org in its own frameset so that it can show an ad at the bottom. Whois says it's owned by IDIRECTIONS.COM. Anyway, if you feel like giving them a free ad banner hit see http://www.salshdot.org/.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
If you're selling something unrelated (or not selling anything at all) and just happen to have a coincidentally close name, it isn't illegal under basic trademark law.
The PayPaI people may be violating PayPal's trademark -- but not through the domain name alone.
--
This is stretching, but while we're on the topic of domain disputes, on that news page, note the one story on the left column : eToys posting a net loss of $45.36 million in Q1.
Kinda makes you all warm and fuzzy inside, eh? =)
Wired have an story under the title "ICANN't Believe That Domain Name", but it is linked to from here as "ICAAN't Believe That Domain Name"! They can't even get their puns right.
You do realize that any attempts to shut down a site like whitehouse.com would be met with cries of "FREE SPEECH! FREE SPEECH!"
I don't see any reason why they ought to be constitutionally protected in doing so.
I agree, and I hope they WON'T be protected. And typo sites do exactly what you state: They're deliberately trying to mislead people.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Um....must I bring up the issue of Paypai?
A typo-based domain serves absolutely NO purpose other than to snag traffic intended for other pages.
Obviously, this would (in theory) be protected by free speech, it still presents a problem in that, less technical users who decide they want to visit a certain webpage either misspell it, or enter the wrong TLD - bringing them to content that is almost certainly not what they were looking for. (Read: whitehouse.com over whitehouse.gov)
Basically, if the only way these sites have to generate traffic is by using similar domain names to popular sites, one has to wonder if these rip-offs should even exist in the first place.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Seems like almost any simple transposition gets you something:
slahsdot.org
salshdot.org
But lsashdot.org is still available!
"I believe that the cult of the particular brings only death - for it bases order on likeness." St.-Exupery
No, I don't. But I think it is ok for you to sell shoes or computers and call them Coka Cola. (Kinda a weird name for a computer, but whatever..) I also think you should be able to use "cokacola.com" as your domain. And if you want to put a web site in that domain, that's fine too. There really isn't any problem unless you start using the domain in such a way as to trick people into thinking that you are Coca Cola.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Hmm.. I wonder what the chances are that someone might mistake that for Microsoft's web site. Let's call that probability P. I assert that the probability of it infringing upon someone's trademark to be exactly equal to P.
8---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Don't forget www.gwbush.com. At least they got George-dubya to say "there ought to be limits to freedom."
Are you implying Yahoo Serious isn't a brand name???
Seriously, considering today's haphazard WIPO rulings, I bet Yahoo would give Mr. Serious 5 million dollars just to go away.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
So to play devil's advocate:
If I buy a domain, build a brand, and years later someone else comes along, gets VC funding, build a bigger brand (or say, Nike launches the 'Fury' sub-brand of shoe and pours millions into marketing) then is my name forfeit because they got more popular faster?
I realize this isn't the issue in the Sting case because Sting predated the web, but where is the line drawn?
People shouldn't confuse these things with trademark disputes. the trademark namespace allows for identical trademarks in non-competing industries. To say that Sting should have sting.com because of a trademark issue is saying that Sting in an Internet Company, and has a trademark related to that internet company.
for example, I could market a brand of skateboards called Trix, but I couldn't market a cereal called Trix, because that would conflict. Similarly, it isn't right to say that marketing a web site called sting.com is conflicting with an artist called Sting.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
'Sting' isn't even his given name. It's a nickname he picked up as a young upstart musician. It'd hardly be fair (as if anything in the WIPO is fair) for them to take away one person's domain because it's the same as a word someone else decided to call themselves.
Next you'd have people changing their legal names just so they could get coveted domain names. Maybe that was Yahoo Serious's plan all along!
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
After all, someone's already registered www.gordonsumner.com specifically for the artist currently known as Sting. All he has to do is ask for it. (And, considering the bathtub pic on the sites' splash page, I'd suggest he do it now.)
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
http://slsahdot.org/index.html
This is the 'Wrong spelling, moron!' one...
look genius, (and i use this term lightly), NWA == National Wrestling Association, which was where sting got his start in the fsking 80's . Old school stuff. Get your facts straight.
--BlueLines "The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity." -anonymous
agreed that there was a group called NWA. i have straight outta compton, niggas4life, and the 100 miles and running single. no argument there. but what i am saying is that there existed a wrestling organization called the NWA in the mid to late 80's . Thats all.
--BlueLines "The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity." -anonymous
here's a url about sting's history. and yes, i was wrong. he was in the WCW, not the WWF. But i was right about the NWA thing.
--BlueLines "The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity." -anonymous
I think sting was done wrong by the WIPO. Afterall, a celeberty's name is very important, and misuse of such a thing can be very confusing. I mean, doesn't the WIPO respect Sting's early work in the NWA with the Four Horsemen? This was long before he switched to the WWF due to it's growing popularity. And think about his gothic makeup now. I think he should body slam every arbitrator invloved in this scam. And that whiney guy in that Police band too.
--BlueLines "The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity." -anonymous
The funniest thing about the Microsof article is that it mentions the Julia Roberts domain grab WIPO case. Take a look at juliaroberts.com. When WIPO said hand it over the fan responsible for it, Russell Boyd, didn't cower before this useless international organization. Instead he filed suit based on his 5th and 14th amendmant rights regarding ownership of property. He still controls the site and is using it to make a stink about it. Pretty damn cool.
About three years ago I used to work at a local Israeli ISP, doing customer support. Being a shift supervisor, I had to deal with all the complaints from the customers.
Ones I got a really furious lady. Before I got to say a single word, she started shouting at me: "you should all be ashame of yourself! This is unexceptable! I got little kids here
I tried to calm her down and find out what was the problem, but she kept saying something about email account and mentioning she have little kids there.
After a lot time (working at customer support requires lots of patience, after all
After all, english wasn't her native language
Now I'm curious. Can anyone post a list of some of the typo sites (preferably with links)?
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Typo sites just prey on newbies, people who have a hard time spelling, and people who just make honest mistakes. I can just imagine the horrified look on parents' faces when their child gets an educational web site's domain name off by one character and is redirected to a porn site. This type of thing has even been used by competitors: for example, for some time "amazom.com" pointed to a direct competitor to Amazon. And let's not forget all the ways children (and adults) can misspell names like "Pokémon."
Don't penalize people for their inability to spell by giving them a flood of banners, porn, and malicious Javascript. Try misspelling some popular sites' names. You'd be surprised.
For more information, click here.
According to Tolkien Enterprises:
Anyone desiring to use one or more of the Tolkien fanciful names and/or characters in connection with merchandise, stage adaptations, or services offered to the public is requested to submit a written proposal to Laurie Battle, Director of Licensing, 2600 Tenth Street, Berkeley, California 94710.
list of things and events (there are also other lists, one for characters, and one for places).
[...]
Sindarin
Smials
Sting
Stone of Erech
talan
[...]
But which is taking advantage of which?
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
If *I had meta for a name, I'd change my middle name for Control and my last name to Alt.
stung.com !
No court will turn him down now!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Wow, how fickle Slashdot it. So now, because of one instance of standing up for the little guy, we say yay for WIPO?
Wasn't it just last week that they evicted corinthians.com ?
-Todd
---
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
Ah. I didn't realize that he was actually squatting. From the article on Slashdot, it sounded like he was using it for legitimate purposes.
I didn't read the link behind that one because it sounded like yet another case where the little guy got stepped on.
And as far as "It's a step in the right direction for WIPO" goes, sure... I agree with that. However, given WIPO's track record, I think it's gonna take a lot more than one case before we could truly say that they changed their tune.
-Todd
---
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
This kind of stuff could quickly lead to popularity contests - who's the better known Sting?
I mean, who's going to be looking for the WCW wrestler Sting?
- passion
While the fact that Sting is a common english word was mentioned, it apparently was not the rationale for the decision. Rather, it was found that the current holder of the domain had not registered it in bad faith. One of the several requirements to evict someone from a domain is indeed the bad faith element.
While, on the face, that looks like a very sound reason (the current owner is known as sting in his online community, and has a real, if cluelessly constructed, site occupying it,) it makes me very suspicious. I've read through reams of prior cases, and this is the first time I've seen WIPO dismiss a case brought by anyone "important" on these grounds. The bad faith clause normally gets a rubberstamp, even when the evidence presented for it seems quite weak.
I've gotta be a little cynical at this point and wonder who in Sting pissed off.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Or
Sting.com Stings Sting Over Sting Name
"He named himself a verb, present tense! He's not stinging, he's not stung, he's STING!" -Dana Carvey
Call on God, but row AWAY from the rocks!
Quite right, if you didn't buy it then tough
I was recently in a situation where one of my client's domains was being disputed by a rather large company in New York. The domain was actually their company name but spelled incorrectly (while it correctly spelled my client's company name, it's a situation with using one or two x's). What got me was the attitude on the part of this large company stating "since we have the trademark then we own the domain regardless of whether we, you or anybody has registered it". I find this hard to believe.
my client ended up giving the domain to the large company under threat of lawsuits for over $10,000,000. he basically figured that although he wouldn't lose the case, the hassle involved with getting an attorney and flying to new york would be too much.
I was hoping to see him fight it out for many reasons, the ethics of it and to stick it to big business, but that didn't work out.
Let's say someone set up juliaroberts.com, and it was a fan site, and they registered it in good faith. Should she be able to take it away? I'd say not. Obviously the microsof.com guy was abusing microsofts trademark on their name, because he was posting a page related to the software industry. But this has come up before, for example, when the people who produce Archie Comics went and sued a parent who registered veronica.org (which is a dead site now), after his daughter Veronica was born.
Incidentally, you can find a nice collection of these blurbs here.
All in all, its most people with money for lawyers trampling on people without, and it is generally just disgusting abuse of IP law. The guy who once owned tatooine.com doesn't have it any more. And there's not even a web page there.
One obvious indication of squatting is people mass-registering domain names. But I'd say unless squatting is clear, first come, first serve. And even with a squatter, they should be reimbursed for all domain fees paid.
I'm just thankful we have 2600 to push some buttons and stand up for people.
Needless to say, anything that went wrong with cable would end up with us getting calls about it. The best part was that the phone had a different ring for off campus calls, so we always knew when it was about cable.
We would answer it "Cable Customer Service", and tell people we would send a truck right out. Nobody ever caught the fact that we didn't ask them where they lived first.
Sometimes we would ask them where they lived, they would tell us, and we would tell them cable was out in that area, and should be back up in under 48 hours. We would then tell them that we wouldn't be charging them anything for their cable service that month.
We never did bill them, so I suppose its all true enough, but we started getting calls from lawyers anyway. We did show the proper respect for the situation, and told them we would stop, while we proceded to give phony help. Being well in debt from student loans can give you an inordinate amount of confidence of your chances in a civil suit.
t
I am sure the WIPO would have given it to him!
Nowadays, alta-vista.com redirects properly to altavista.com.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
And it belongs to Turkmenistan.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
I think Typo names should be allowed. If we disallow that, then what about paradies? parady, by definition, is making a reference to someone else besided the original person.
If I own Macrosoft, and parody MicroSoft, I dn't feel I should have to use it.
Of course legal action should be taking against people who misrepresent them selfs, or take money and not provide reasonable sereves expected by the customer.
example:
say I own a domain called Psypal.com
And I use this site to parady paypal.com, on this site I talk about you sending us your creditcard number by thinking real loud. obviosly a parady. but if I imply that I am paypal, so I can get money from you, wipo should step in.
as far as famous people trying to get there domain name, espcially one thats a verb, I don't feel they have the right to do so. I should have every right to talk about a famous person if I want to, and start a group of people who wish to do the same.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
since people are speaking of typo sites. (as you probably know, it's a site linking to anti-microsoft products.
________
A close-sounding name with a real, legitimate purpose is one thing, but purposely deceiving people is bad. and if they think they are at a site they are not, it can harm the company who is being "typoed"
I had a phone number 1 digit off from USWest when I was in college, and we'd get at least 20 wrong numbers a day. I started answering the phone "hello, this is uswest, how can I assist you" and usually they would buy it. Anyone they asked for, I'd say that they were fired. Not really my fault (I swear) but if I intentionally set up a phone company number for a competing company just 1 digit away so I could take their business, it would be wrong. And it's happened.
________
anazon is not Amazon
dosney is not Disney
disny is not Disney
yehoo is not yahoo
yaoo is not Yahoo
suckdot used to be a parody site
bigfot is not bigfoot
Many of these sites have gotten legal letters of late, as they used to link direclty to porn sites (eg. dosney).
"one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
Are you claiming it is OK for me to sell a cola dirnk in a red bottle, but call it Coka Cola?
This is basic trademark law, and it is (and should be) illegal.
"one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
Did he really think he had the sole world-wide rights to this word ?
Serves him right for using such a pretentious name.
As I understand it, cybersquatting laws in the US are not applicable to individuals, only to companies. This is, AFAIK, technically the case in the UK too. However, I know one author won her name back recently in court.
No, Cybersquatting applies to anyone with a trading use of the name. The tort is called "passing-off" (it's called something different in the states) and the essence of it is using someone else's commercially-valuable name. If it would mislead a consumer other than "a moron in a hurry" (the actual test under UK law!) then it's passing off, and punishable by damages and an injunction to restrain further use.
At the moment, here in the UK, you can only get a remedy through the courts for .uk domains, until such time as we get WIPO recognition at our tld people, which should be soon.
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
In one instance (specifically microsoft.org, case summary) Microsoft won the case in large part because the domain holder failed to respond when contacted by the WIPO arbiters.
People, if you think you've got a right to a domain, defend it! If the possessor of microsoft.org had sought to use it as a "Microsoft sucks" site or something along those lines, he might have had a fighting chance at keeping it! (Of course, it seems that he may have been squatting on the domain, though we don't know since he never answered for himself.)
It's hard to complain about an 81% failure rate when the defendants are doing nothing.
yours,
john
Under UK law, you can't register your name as a Trademark. The test case, a few years back, was when the Presley Estate tried to sue a small memerobelia shop called "Elvisly Yours". They lost, on the grounds that "Elvis Presely" cannot be a trademark.
OTOH, the estate of Princess Diana did manage to get her name registered, but I think they used some way round the standard law. Something to do with a "seal of approval" using her name.
If you do want to protect your name, the best thing to do is to set up a company named after you. This should also protect the domain name better than just being called that name. Even this is frought(sp?) with difficulties. Harrods once sued a Mr Harood (I think) for trading under his own name. I don't remember the outcome, though.
yours,
Arieh
These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined. -- Homer Simpson
A lot of the fuss about cybersquatters seems to hinge around what is a 'legitimate use' for a domain name.
For example, say I wanted to make a fan-pic site of Julia Roberts (not that i have the time or inclination). That would be a fair use of the name, and I doubt she'd be able to win it back. Things get a bit complicated if I'm only holding the domain for ransom, however.
As I understand it, cybersquatting laws in the US are not applicable to individuals, only to companies. This is, AFAIK, technically the case in the UK too. However, I know one author won her name back recently in court.
The company I work for (One of the biggest European online traders) has been cybersqatted like mad. We are sure that people have set up non-trading companies to stop us being able to get the domains back.
The real issue is of the legal status of domain names. I don't see why they shouldn't be a commodity like, say, number plates. Just because I have a number plate on my car with J R0838TS doesn't mean that Julia Roberts has the right to sue me, or win my plate that I paid for. As long as I'm not pretending I'm Julia Roberts (pretty hard considering....) I'm not doing anything wrong.
Now I know the legal status of domain names is contentious anyway, and the Law is effectivly being written by these rulings. It just seems to me that if you didn't buy it, you shouldn't get it.
yours,
Arieh
These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined. -- Homer Simpson