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Ford vs. 2600 Judge Upholds Right To Link
AnimeFreak writes: "According to this 2600 article, 2600 has won the right to link to Ford's website after Ford sued them for doing so. Ford had asserted that hyperlinking to their website or referring to it in DNS records constituted a variety of trademark violations. Judge Cleland rejected Ford's twisted interpretation of the trademark act, which claimed that by disparaging Ford's mark and preventing it from 'fully exploiting the value of its mark,'" 2600 was in violation of trademark law by redirecting a possibly offensive domain to Ford's site. We've mentioned this before, and it's nice to see a ruling in favor of linking. Thanks to Phalse Phace, here's a link to the 11-page decision.
This completely contradicts the judgement in the DeCSS case. 2600 only linked to the site to get the code..
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
now they can buy and redirect wedidfuckgeneralmotors.com
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Ford is now the owner of "wegotfuckedby2600.com"
I belive everyone should have the right to have hyperlinks. However, I don't feel the way inwhich this redirection is done is entirely fair to ford.
People who are not new to the web are going to be able quickly determine that this(http://fuckgeneralmotors.com/) is not ford's work. However, someone new to the web is going to say I went to http://fuckgeneralmotors.com/ and then it loaded up the ford site. Since I didn't do anything when I loaded the site, then it must be ford's work.
I think they should have to have somekind of statement on that page saying they have nothing to do with the ford motor company.
chad
ERROR 404: sig not found
Even if they're not violating Ford's trademark, I'm sure BT can still get them for violating their patent on hyperlinks.
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
So, does this mean I can register fuckslashdot.org?
:)
Seriously, to register a derogatory domain name and point it to someone else's webpage is effectively slander. Ford did not want its image associated with a profane domain name because that would hurt sales, and they were right to do so. When the average person typed fuckgeneralmotors.com and Ford's website popped up, they would have assumed that the domain name was registered by Ford, and hence, that Ford supported the use of profanity. Thus, doing so effectively disparaged the Ford name by association with what some would consider objectionable language.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Ford failed to prove these things, thus the injunction was denied. It's a nice finding, but the outcome of the trial remains to be seen.
One encouraging footnote in the finding, for those who don't want to read 11 pages of legalese (although it's not nearly as bad as some), reads as follows:
Also, towards the end of the finding Judge Cleland provides an excellent criticism of the implication in Planned Parenthood and Jews for Jesus that causing commercial harm is sufficient cause for a claim of infringement, pointing out that many uses that are specifically excluded by the FTDA cause commercial harm to the mark holder.
While the case is far from over, it doesn't look good for Ford.
\
There isnt a meatspace equivalent unless somehow by looking at your sign people were mysteriously teleported to a Ford dealership.
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When will they learn that if someone is linking to their site, they can determine that through the HTTP Referer header and stick in some logic to do some of their own redirection or change the dynamic content. They can surely make the link as ineffective as if the original page had made an error in the link and put in the wrong domain. Or are corporate suits just too dumb to realize they can control something like their own web site?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Most people who have used the Internet for some time understand that anyone can link to you, and that because they did doesn't mean you endorse their site. Many companies have threatened legal action against linkers on the grounds that they don't want to be associated with certain kinds of sites.
The cause for concern is that the human brain tends to associate things that occur together, even though intellectually we know they are separate. So although this case is a bit off target (who cares if GM sucks points to Ford), think of the case where a porno site links to yours. People intellectually know that your site has nothing to do with porno, but will associate the two anyway.
2600 stepped in when they found out someone got sued by Ford for the domain name fordsucks.com the domain name was taken from the person sued as you can see:
Registrant:
Ford Motor Company (FORDSUCKS5-DOM)
330 Town Center Dr. FPS-Suite 600
Dearborn, MI 48126
US
Domain Name: FORDSUCKS.COM
Administrative Contact:
DNSmgr, Ford (DF197-ORG) dnsmgr@FORD.COM
Ford Motor Company
1303 Fairlane Circle
Allen Park, MI 48101
US
313-390-3476
Fax- 313-390-1697
Technical Contact:
DNSadmin, Ford (AD2148-ORG) dnsadmin@FORD.COM
Ford Motor Company
1303 Fairlane Circle
Allen Park, MI 48101
USA
313-390-3476
Fax- 313-390-1697
Billing Contact:
DNSbill, Ford (DF169-ORG) dnsbill@FORD.COM
Ford Motor Company
Fairlane Business Park
1303 Fairlane Circle
ITHQ-B
Allen Park, MI 48101 US
313-390-3476
Fax- 313-390-1697
Record last updated on 20-Sep-2000.
Record expires on 20-Sep-2002.
Record created on 20-Sep-2000.
Database last updated on 22-Dec-2001 22:53:00 EST.
Domain servers in listed order:
DNS004.FORD.COM 136.1.1.20
DNS003.FORD.COM 136.2.1.20
2600 caught wind of this and wanted to fight for our rights. They then registered fordreallysucks.com. So don't think 2600 did this just to fuck with Ford. Ford started this shit by suing anyone that used their name in a domain.
I am proud of what 2600 did. Many would not have the nuts to take on a giant sompany like Ford. 2600 forever!
OMG 2600 won a court case! Stop the presses! The end of the world is nigh!
Comedy aside, I was starting to wonder if it would happen in my lifetime (thme winning anything.)
This is simply the judge denying a prelimenary injunction that Ford tried to impose. The trial has yet to proceed.
Basically, it looks like they tried to hoodwink the judge into shutting it down based on some loosely similar precedent. The judge's ruling reads quite clearly and concisely. He even states that Ford has 'no chance of succeeding'.
But.. again, this is just the denial of the injunction.. it has no real bearing on the case itself, other than the judge feels, based on what he's been shown, that ford has no case.
Sorry.. Trademark law requires 'resonableness' on the part of the public. Trademark law was *not* created in order to prevent slander.
Also..'fuckgeneralmotors' is not slander. 'Scientologysucks' COULD be slander, depending on if it's opinion or fact (hey.. it DOES suck.. but that's another story).
Trademark is not there to 'prevent your name from being associated with objectionable language'. It's there to prevent others from benefiting from the use of your mark, period, or from otherwise 'diluting' your mark.
Oh.. and please note.. the only mark in dispute here is the hyperlink to 'ford.com'. THey are NOT EVEN USING THE TRADEMARK ON THE SITE. The domain name is not what's in dispute... Ford was trying to say that using the word 'ford' in the hyperlink, because it came from a site called 'fuckgeneralmotors.com' was diluting the value of their mark.
And the judge called bullshit.
This is not a slander case. It's a trademark case.
Seeing as that 2600 page does an auto redirect to the real ford page. Not cool. Ranks right up there with spammers who forge their addresses.
$cientology is continously attempting to "spam" search engines like Google in attempt to push critical sites back in the list.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
...except when Joe Bloggs puts up a website, he is publishing it publicly.
You could've hired me.
The United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO.ORG) and the United States Department of Commerce know how to solve trademark and domain name conflict. They hide the answer to 'consumer confusion', 'trademark conflict' and 'passing off'.
Virtually every word is trademarked, be it Alpha to Zeta or Aardvark to Zulu, most many times over. MOST share the same words or initials with MANY others in a different business and/or country. For example, the World Trade Organization (WTO) shares its initials with six trademarks - in the U.S. alone (please check). Conflict is impossible to avoid - surely they would have to be corrupt people not to use solution?
It is obvious a restricted TLD is required to replace the ® trademark symbol. The World Intellectual Property Organisation SWIPE domains from the lawful owner - so I got SWIPO.ORG to redirect to them.
Seen a domain name you would like to hijack? Order it now from SWIPO.ORG.
Please visit WIPO.org.uk to see the simple solution.
Actually, it is completely over. Ford lost. Read the update on 2600.com...
http://www.2600.com/news/display.shtml?id=915
We're on the road to Tycho.
An injunction is granted when there is a great likelyhood of irreprerable harm and a great likelyhood of the case being won by the party requesting the injunction.
Fight Spammers!
In the early days of the Web all the links were embedded and you had to go to a menu bar option to enter a link by hand. It all worked fine.
The ability to enter a URL into the menu bar appeared in one of the later versions of Mosaic after folk pointed out that it was confusing to have the URL presented in one place and changeable in another.
The Web would work and be pretty successful if we were all using raw IP addresses. However the likes of Alta-Vista and Yahoo would have become much more important than they have.
The real problem would be managing the Internet, links would be hardcoded to particular ISP providers. The effect would probably have been to introduce something like DNS and call it the URN system, as opposed to what we actually did and develop something on top of the DNS system we call the URN system... hey ho...
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
www.notslashdot.org
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Ford failed to prove these things, thus the injunction was denied. It's a nice finding, but the outcome of the trial remains to be seen.
* * * *
While the case is far from over, it doesn't look good for Ford.
Yes, but its worse for Ford than you have suggested. In another ruling, issued the same day, the Court granted defendant's motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.
This meant that the Defense was able to prove that, even assuming that every allegation present in the complaint was absolutely true, that the facts nevertheless failed to state a claim upon which relief can be granted under the law -- that is, Ford doesn't have a case.