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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.
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.
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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.
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.