Battlebots Battles It Out: TV Show Versus IRC

Ender, Duke_of_URL writes: "Battlebots the TV show, has joined the ranks of Corporate bad-guys buy attempting to force out Battlebots.org, an IRC site that had registered their domain before Battlebots even filed for a trademark. As most of you know, in any dispute over domains it's the money that wins."

Comments

Re:There are two paths:

[cshotton]

Find someone who will fight for them pro-bono (as they have a strong case) or get someone like the EFF involved (for funding)

Bull. They have no case. BattleBots was a registered trademark 16 months before this guy squatted on the domain. Even the EFF wouldn't touch this with a 10 foot pole. The guy's best hope is to get them to pay for his original domain registration, because the registrar is going to snatch that domain name away from this kid in a heartbeat.

Blaming BattleBots for going after this squatter shows an incredible ignorance of how trademarks work. If you hold a trademark and do not vigorously defend it, you run the risk of having the mark declared generic (e.g., Kleenex, Xerox, Thermos) or reverted to the public domain.

As a corporation, BattleBots has no choice but to defend its mark or lose it. Since it has every right, established through a date of first use that is 16 months earlier than the IRC kid, how can you fault them?

The best thing that could come of your call for a boycott of the show is that you might get some pale, pasty nerd boys off the sofa and out into the sunlight for a change.

Simple, pain free solution

[Ikari Gendou]

Just add a little line saying "We are NOT affiliated with Comedy Central's Battlebots. The Battlebots official website can be found here."
Battlebots.com will get their hits from people mistakenly typing in battlebots.org, and everyone can get along! If people would just take a moment and do that simple thing if they have a domain that might get accidental hits, we might not have these problems.

Yes, I know. Wishful thinking..