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Chip Rosenthal Wins Unicom Domain Name Case

Posted by Hemos on from the follow-up-with-win dept.

Seth Schoen writes "As seen last month, Chip Rosenthal (whom many people know for Reply-to Munging Considered Harmful, among other projects) was threatened with the loss of his domain name unicom.com. He's now won in court and will get to keep the domain, at least for the time being."

3 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. HAve you noticed by wiredog · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That the corp sueing him apparently didn't go through the ICANN name dispute resolution system? Interesting that they realize that ICANN has no real power in those sorts of disputes. Not that it's any surprise See this story from a year ago for another example of using the courts to avoid/overrule ICANN.

    --

    Best Slashdot Co
  2. Re:Not a ruling on merits, but interesting anyway by chip+rosenthal · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Thanks for the support, Dino.

    I think the decision goes beyond interesting, and really will be valuable. The jurisdiction question is an area of the law that needed clarification, and I'm really proud that we were able to do that. This decision will help shield the independent web publisher from "long arm" tactics, that would pull them into a long-distance lawsuit they couldn't fight.

    (By the way ... I was sued in a Federal court, not State court. If they want to come back after me, they are going to have to come to Austin and do it.)

    You are right that there were other matters in question, but once jursidiction was settled they all became moot. Somebody, someday, is going to have to litigate those issues too. (Hey, why you looking at me!!?!)

  3. If you have a business domain, get a trademark by Animats · · Score: 3, Interesting
    It's not that hard to get a trademark. It can be done entirely on-line now. Base price is $325.

    Trademarks can be registered on either the "principal" or the "supplemental" register. Trademarks on the principal register can be enforced against others. Trademarks on the supplemental register can't be enforced against others, but prevent others from claiming you are infringing their trademark. If your application for registration on the principal register is rejected, you can often get a registration on the supplementary register, for which the standards are lower. In particular, you can usually get a supplementary register trademark on a commonly used word, which is valuable for domain purposes.

    Either way, you get to use the ® symbol, and you're protected against any trademark-related claims on a domain.