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!)

Comments

A funny story on typo sites

[sela]

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 ... you are supposed to be a responsible company! I'm going to write a letter about this to your CEO ... I can sue your company for this ...".

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 ...) I realized what was the problem. She was asking about an extra-email account, and one of the support guys gave her hotmail address. The problem was, she was typing www.hotmale.com ... which is, well ... you know ...

After all, english wasn't her native language ...

Sting taken by Tolkien Enterprises

[drivers]

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
[...]

Re:Typo sites SHOULD be allowed?

[jacobm]

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...

Why? Just because you have a right to free speech doesn't mean that everything that you do by talking is legal. After all, con artists and social engineers are just talking, but they are talking with intent to deceive someone else into doing something that they wouldn't otherwise do (give them money, sensitive data, etc). If one could prove that a particular typo site (such as PayPai.com) was deliberately trying to mislead people, I don't see any reason why they ought to be constitutionally protected in doing so.
--
-jacob

"Typo" sites should NOT be allowed

[tylerh]

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.