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The etoy Strikes Back
Is there confusion between the two names? eToys seems to think so, since it got etoy's website taken down in December 1999 for exactly that reason. The site was put back up later, and eToys' legal action halted, mostly because etoy was using its name, and had its website, long before eToys even existed.
And I can especially see why etoy is worried, since eToys has also filed a trademark application on "ETOYS" in the context of providing "interactive and arcade games via a global computer network." Which is, well, pretty darn close to what the artistic group has been doing for the last five years.
So if there's confusion, it really seems like eToys brought this on itself. When it set up in the first place, simply checking for the singular version of its corporate name would seem to me like a gimme. Failure to do so would seem like a clear-cut case of infringement.
Things are a little more confusing than that, though. The trademark that eToys bought was actually registered by an unrelated company in 1990 ("Etna Toys") -- the law starts to give me a headache at this point. Only a lawyer could love the difference between a trademark application and an Intent To Use declaration, I think. The resolution of this one may come down to whether it's appropriate to purchase a trademark of another company without actually purchasing the company itself, or any of its equipment, inventory, etc. In other words, are words themselves, words given legal protection by our government, subject to being bought and sold on the open market?
An interesting question. Not the same question as whether etoy.com and etoys.com should be able to coexist on the same internet despite unreconciliable philosophical differences, but ... an interesting question.
We'll keep you posted on how this one turns out. It's essentially the inverse of the fiasco in late 1999, with the lawsuit (apparently) pointed in the correct chronological order this time. Whether eToys will even exist as a company by the time this suit is resolved is, unfortunately, an open question.
I say they should put the employees of e-toy and e-toys in the sqaured circle and have them duke it out. WWF could show it on pay-per view although it may be a problem watching it as a bunch of hackers screwed up my direct-tv hcard. Damn hackers, we must keep them out of our banks.
Note that etoy firmly insists they are a real for-profit corporation, so they clearly don't deserve much sympathy. Their Flash-ridden site doesn't count as much of a service to the Slashdot community. On the other hand, eToys engineers contribute to open source projects like mod_perl and Template Toolkit that directly benefit Slashdot development. In fact, eToys is one of the biggest customers of VA Linux, which pays the bills at Slashdot.
Okay, I was just kidding about DoS'ing them. No one deserves that. But do think about the fact that there are real people - possibly just like you - at both corporations before you jump to conclusions.
Yeah...but NSI will hold on to the domain name for at least 6 months after that! :)
You'd be right if this case was merely two morally equal entities squabbling over IP rights. But it's not. Etoy is old Internet. Etoy was just minding their own, doing the Internet-is-all-commercialized-but-we're-still-a-b unch-of-weird-tech-art-people thing, and then Etoys went "Money+Internet=good" and decided to walk over the good guys. It's so clear cut, it's symbolic. Which is why this lawsuit is important.
Those of us who remember the Internet of olde and still hold some hope for the future that medium promised need to send a clear message to those who seek to profit through its exploitation:
WE WERE HERE FIRST, SO FUCK OFF!
> WE WERE HERE FIRST, SO FUCK OFF!
No no, now ask any lawyer, & it/he/she will tell you, ``possession is 9 points of the law."
eToys tried to take possession away from etoy, & failed.
eToys now has little or no money. They're facing creditors. Time for etoy to hire a lawyer & win the war.
After all, etoy still has possession.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
But you will be cutting the namespace by half. That's not good. We're dealing with a limited and shared resource here.
cheers,
sklein
What can you say? They're artists. Apparently the medium of choice for the art of the times is the lawsuit.
Study carefully the authoritative stride of the lawyer as he approaches the edifice of Justice. Note with admiration the loving attention lavished upon each brief. Imagine the chagrin of the assembled when the plaintiff reveals that under the robe, the judge is wearing no pants.
Also of interest to the Slashdot crowd: Mindstorms are cheap. It feels sort of vulture-like, but $100 for a Robotics Invention System is pretty good. If you're ordering, balance against the possibility of them going bankrupt before they ship it.
In other words, are words themselves, words given legal protection by our government, subject to being bought and sold on the open market?
Sure, why not? An asset is an asset is an asset.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Yes, but see, the toy store's original lawsuit proves that they believe that there is cause for consumer confusion. Therefore, only one can have the trademark. And Etoy had it first.
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Well given that eToys' shares are currently worth about 25 cents and they just announced third quarter losses of about 52 cents a share - much larger than predicted - it doesn't look like eToys is much longer for this world. Given that, it may seem pointless and vindictive for etoy to be going after them at this point.
But consider this: when eToys goes bankrupt, its assets will be put up for sale. Like most dotcoms, the main asset of this company is likely their domain name. If another company buys the domain, there is always the chance that with fresh money and fresh lawyers, they once again pursue the attack on etoy.
By counter attacking now, etoy is in a good position to protect themselves once and for all. First of all, with eToys on the financial ropes, they will have less money to throw at lawyers to defend themselves. Secondly, and most importantly, if etoy wins, they will prevent many potential future headaches for themselves. Even if eToys goes down before the suit is settled, the legal cloud hovering over the etoys.com domain "property" will make it much less attractive to prospective buyers.
Trickster Coyote
Ignore that man behind the curtain.
Ideology is for ideots.
On the other hand, eToy sends me a crapload of spam. That's all they do as far as I know. I say F&*% ETOY! They get no sympathy from me.
P.S. I agree that eToys shouldn't be trying to get the etoy domain name, but that's been said here about a zillion times over the past however many months or years so there's no real reason to say it again.
"I say wait it out and pick up some Starwars toys at the closing sale." They might get Starwars toys, but the name will go to the highest bidder.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
the ironic thing is that if this case law existed a year and a half ago, eToys might've been able to use it as ammunition against etoy.
Ok, wasn't it recently ruled that you couldn't buy and sell Domain names like realestate? If so, would the same thing apply to Trademarks or any similar concept? And if not, what is the legal difference between the two? Why would one not be able to register a bunch of trademarks and then offer to sell them like realestate? Why not for domain names? Maybe I'm just feeble minded, but I don't see an appreciable difference between the two concepts.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Their failure is enough punishment.
No it's not. It's not punishment at all, it's the direct result of their idiotic business plan. They have not yet been punished for going after an independant website which posed no threat to them, was not in their field (so trademark dilution wouldn't apply), on an illegitimate trademark claim anyway, and blatently for only the Christmas season (both to get publicity, and try to shut down misdirection over the holidays, their biggest sales season in theory). They probably never will be punished. So pardon me if I don't think they've caught enough crap. Corporate officers and shareholders should be held liable for this sort of thing. When they cause financial harm to innocent people, they should be punished.
--
Communication is only possible between equals
You're right. I believe that the proper term for this kind of trickery is domain name hijacking. That is, they took a name which rightfully belongs to and is in use by someone else and had the DNS records changed to point to a different site. If you ask me this is an even lower form sleaze than cyber-squatting. At least with the cyber-squatters you can just buy them off.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Sounds like a ridiculous lawsuit filed to get revenge over another ridiculous lawsuit. Revenge-based crap like this wastes the court's time, and one thing our court system doesn't have an excess of is free time. I hope the /. crew doesn't become a fan of these types of lawsuits just because now it's the underdog filing one. I don't see what the big deal is, anyway. Trademarks have domains, and I think it's pretty safe to say that these two entities are in fairly different domains.
Yes. And in this case, it also happens to be potential trademark infrigement on etoy.
Payback is a BITCH ain't it.
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
You missed a very important point. Even though Mattel paid me a judgment, Mattel kept going with their baseless libel claim.
Mattel tried to use a baseless libel claim and threat of continued litigation to try to shut me up.
I asked them to drop their libel claim and their response was that "we will continue to litigate."
How would you suggest that large corporations be prevented from this type of abuse? In the case of Mattel they have over 134 cases listed in one of the 94 federal courts.
BTW. The courts , generally, really only let us punish by taking money; no public flogging.
Fight Spammers!
What needs to be done, is to fight back and fight back hard. A couple of large judgments against these bullies discourage other potential bullies.
That is why I am fighting against Mattel -- to stop them from doing this to others!
Fight Spammers!
The standard the law uses is whether the public might become confused because of two conflicting marks. Ie. If members of the public see "etoy" and might wonder, "Oh, is that related to the online toy vendor?" then there is confusion.
Of course it has to be legitimate confusion. For example, if the public would look and say "Oh, no, this is an art group they don't sell toys" then there is no confusion because they are in different fields. Thus Apple Computer and Apple Auto Glass can and do co-exist. However, if Apple Computer were to try to repair windshields or Apple Auto Glass sell computers, it could be a problem, as it was when Apple Records raised questions about Apple Computers which could be used as musical instruments.
So even though eToys, in purchasing the Etna etoys mark, would have prior claim if the mark had not been invalidated for being generic, it wouldn't matter as the marks are different.
But etoys made a mistake when they sued etoy, for they stated that they felt there was confusion. Now etoy doesn't have to prove confusion nearly so much.
But if etoys is a generic term it means anybody can use it, so they may not have much luck.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
You know, I'll grant the point of the political scaremongers who insist that American education is not all that it could be. Nonetheless, I think most of us are educated enough to know the difference between a pluralized word and one which is not.
For example, if I said, "Go to my website and buy bananas! It's at http://www.bananas.com!", do you think it is more likely that you would A) Visit www.bananas.com; or B) Screw up, visit www.banana.com, follow some links, end up at a completely unrelated personal homepage for a 14 year old Malaysian girl, get discouraged, and refuse to do business with me, ever again?
If the answer is B), then, for the first time in his life, George W. Bush may be right: we really do need some education reform.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
These folks at etoy need to relax... according to etoys , the website only has enough $ to opperate till March. Man, they LOST 84 million in the last quarter alone!
I say wait it out and pick up some Starwars toys at the closing sale.
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Well, what if some Big Company (tm) with Deep Pockets (tm) had bought out eToys? There is an important legal precedent that needs to be set here that will make it more difficult for corporate interests to abuse the system. And the legal interests should also be resolved so that it is perfectly clear to all concerned.
Leaving it fuzzy is what lawyers thrive on. Leaving it fuzzy will leave the door open for more stupid stuff like this in the future. Therefore, although eToys may be getting the short end of the stick, this is a stick they tried to use agains others. in this context we need to set an example and we need to close the door.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Having looked at the arguments behind the domain name situation, I reached a logical conclusion. It is my considered and informed opinion, that we arrived here because of one main cause.
The authorities are deliberately managing system, so that domain names are not compatible to trademarks. Though they know how to make them compatible, do not do so - for reasons I shall not go into here. Needless to say, reasons based on money and power.
You will see in just the USA alone that there are 1685 trademarks that contain the word "toy". You can find them listed at: USPTO.
There are also very many thousands of trademarks, that use the word "toy", in 200 other countries.
It is logical, therefore, that they ALL cannot be toy.com or similar, (etoy, eToys etc.) - else they would "infringe" upon each other.
In legal terms, it is also unfair competition that one should be allowed to use their name and ALL the others not.
BUT - authorities know the answer, allowing all trademarks to use their name on the Internet. I put this solution to USPTO and DoC - they do not deny it will solve problem. Basically, an identifier, class and country code are ESSENTIAL to identify trademarks.
All these cases, in the courts and before WIPO, are based on lies and propaganda. I am amazed so many intelligent people have been taken in. Consumer confusion is an obvious lie, used to take away the domain. They all cannot have their name - nearly ALL visitors are going to arrive at wrong location. So they are going to be "confused" anyway.
Please visit my site WIPO.org.uk to see the some of the laws they break.
WIPO.org.uk is the World Intellectual Piracy Organization.
Not associated with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO.org)
Meanwhile, eToys has plunged 55 percent, to $12.50, as the company effectively announced its demise. The company stated it is laying off all 293 of its remaining employees, effective April 6. The company reiterated that it anticipates its current cash - cash equivalents and cash that may be generated from operations - will be sufficient to meet its anticipated cash needs until approximately March 31. But, the company says, "there can be no assurance in this regard." In order to continue operations in 2001, the company said it would require an additional, substantial capital infusion. EToys said it does not believe additional capital will become available to the company.
Of course, I must wonder what that $12.50 buys!
sulli
RTFJ.
I know someone who patented /. a long time ago. This site is history! Hahahaha!
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
So to use the phrase "big bad corporation" is a sign that we have not identified the problem. The issue isn't the fact that there is a thing called a corporation, it's that there is an entire culture within and without the people of that corporation that compels them to behave a certain way. Success these days is getting harder to measure, if the dot-com stupidity is any kind of lesson. The mantra of "value for shareholders" belies a simplistic conception of the relationships that exist between the people in the company and the people outside of it.
As much as PR people would like you to believe there is such thing as The Authoritative Voice of The Company, there is only inhuman propaganda that seeks to distort facts to its advantage. Every one of them is just fulfilling a role that is expected of a "professional", and nobody cares about anything outside of that because it isn't their job to. Ethics, in the greater sense, is dead.
Frivilous lawsuits are a behaviour, and one that the system rewards on a daily basis. Law is the new battleground, where only ideas matter, and actual physical assets are secondary. To buy a word is insanity (I want "the"), but we are edging closer and closer to that insanity every day. I wouldn't fault etoy for attacking eToys, they are just following Sun Tzu's advice: "attack where you are strong and the enemy is weak".
The ability to abstract is important. The inability to see things for what they are is killing us. We believe anything that confirms our previous views. We disbelieve anything that requires introspection, dialogue, and genuine selflessness to explore.
Corporations are the new power in the world. Forget about what you've been told about democracy: the power to direct the energy of the human population lies in the hands of the elite. This has been true for thousands of years, and has never been otherwise (except for a brief time in Spain...). The fact that one class of elite has been usurped by another, over and over, century after century, is just detail. The new elite is establishing itself on the amoral ground of Law, and this is where the power will flow from.
From Antigua, from Singapore, from offshore. The fight is not with each other (ie: company A vs. company B), but for the dominance of the new paradigm: the corporate "We" over the democratic "We".
Play the game. Surrender to your greed, your hate. Join the Dark Side. You have no idea of its power...
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
Beware of who you kick when they're down, because they might decide kick you right back when you're down!
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
I'm getting sick of people going after eToys. They had a bad stay on the internet. It sickens me and just about anyone else on /. about people suing over names and such. Please just leave eToys alone. Their failure is enough punishment.
eToys showed their asses last year when they got some "judge" Kaplan to basically prevent Etoy from being able to have their website up during the Christmas sales season. eToys then dropped their suit (probably when they realized they'd ultimately lose).
Now that eToys is tottering on going titsup.com (as The Register puts it) I think it's only poetic justice that it will be Etoy driving a nail in the coffin. It makes sense on their part to try to help kill eToys, who could restart their suit at a future date.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
EToys have registered e-toy.com to point to their web site - that's cybersquatting, I believe, as well as trademark infringement.
EToys don't have a leg to stand on here, I think...