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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.
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"
Not really. The DeCSS linking thing was about copyright law, the DMCA (hissss....). Ford was sighting Trademark law. The DMCA was never in play.
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
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.
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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
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!
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.
Nonsense. If Ford were just pissed they could've blocked access to their site from fuckgeneralmotors.com. Would've taken 2 minutes if they were slow. Instead they reach for the lawyers. They're not concerned about their trademark, they were trying to establish a precedent they could use to intimidate others.