U.S. Cybersquatting Law Goes Global

typecast writes: "Better bone up on Bulgarian trademark law before you register your next domain name. A U.S. federal court has ruled that laws protecting trademarks in foreign countries apply under the American Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) of 1999. (Note to the U.S. registrants of Quartz.com: watch out!)"

Comments

Not as evil as the article states.

[Lumpy]

Sorry, but if you register some domains and then hope to extort thousands out of it, you deserve to have it taken from you. I know that the law can and will be twisted by lawyers (remember all lawyers are evil scumbags, they will screw you for their own gain at every chance they get.. no, I'm not biased). The implications of this are designed for good intentions... What if a US moron was trying to extort cash out of a poor company in the country that was formerly known as the USSR for his domain name? Granted anyone with 1/3'd of a brain can come up with a workable replacement..

Re:Not as evil as the article states.

[mshiltonj]

Sorry, but if you register some domains and then hope to extort thousands out of it, you deserve to have it taken from you.

Translation: You can be a company afraid of the Internet and be slow to adjust to market market pressures. When you finally open your eyes and see that others have taken advantage of your lethargy in hopes of monetary gain, you need not fret -- just taken them to court.

After all, we now know that successful corporations are not allowed to fail. In times of trouble, entire industries will recieve multi-billion dollar bailouts. Laws and courts will favor successful companes (like anti-cybersquatting laws) and in the rare cases that a corporation does fail, Congress will hold dozens of hearings to find out why and make sure that it doesn't happen again.

Existing corporations and existing power-structures are not allow to fail or be challenged.

wtf?

[Anonymous Coward]

where did freedom go again? isn't this almost like killing capitalism? i have three domains right now, and i'm not ready to launch sites for two of them. does that mean someone with a company name of the same type can just take it?

Re:wtf?

[Webere]

99% of those registered names have no sites behind them. People should be given a week or a month to put something meaningful behind it, or lose it to the next customer.

you know, there are other things you can do with a domain that don't involve having a web site...

Foreign Law coming to US

[aliebrah]

Shouldn't the correct title of the article be something like "Spanish Law coming to US?". This is most definitely not a case of US law going overseas.

Remember, it might be a shock to some people but to whole world does not revolve around the USA.

right thing (tm)

[sapone]

I think the judge did the right thing in this case, the term Barcelona is commonly understood to refer to the Spanish city of Barcelona. But this shouldn't be based on possession of a "trademark"... there's really no trade involved. It's the name of a large city, this fact should supersede registered rademarks anyway... "culture supersedes commerce" would be a nice rule :-).

Had to expect this...

[crc32]

After all, the US is a member of WIPO, and as such, is somewhat required to engage in these IP-law "harmonization" practices. Other countries will also be doing the same thing for our laws (extrateritorial DMCA jurisdiction... what has the world come to!).

US Verses the World

[Alien54]

Wonder of Wonders. People outside the US have rights.

God bless, what will happen next?

Understand, this is a novel thought for some USians

Does the law guide or replace?

[CaseStudy]

Did the judge just look to Spanish law to help make his point, or did he specifically say that Spain had jurisdiction over the case?

If the former, so what? Judges are guided by all sorts of things in their opinions. It's only in the application of the laws of the judge's jurisdiction that stare decisis applies.

If the latter, why? The precedential effect will be in the choice of law, and why Spanish law was chosen over the ACPA is vitally important. (I get the impression that Spanish law was used merely to determine whether "Barcelona" was protectable by the ACPA.)

cleveland.com is in trouble

[perdida]

I am with Robertson on this one.

The Internet is not a Dewey Decimal System library. The indexing and categorization of information, as it's manifested in the meaning in URLs, is a natural process. It happened due to geeks being funny, people trying to make money, and so on. We have the wonderful histories of sites like www.whitehouse.com, which brings up the question - is it true that people who want information on the web about the White House would not want to see a porno site? I don't think so.
Protection from surprise on the Internet should not be the realm of the government, but the realm of the individual.

Re:cleveland.com is in trouble

[Anonymous Coward]

When it comes to "categorization of information" I thought .com was intended for commericial entities, with other extensions for geographical entities. Is the city of Barcelona now the same type of thing as IBM? Or has the original concept of different top level domains for different types of thing become totally meaningless?

Isn't barcelona.es good enough for them?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, it is a city in Spain, right? And there is a reason every country has a TLD, right? What do they need a .com for? Are they an American company?

Re:Exactly, If foreign companys want an address

[aridhol]

that is why they have their own fucking country codes.

Funny, I thought the United States had a .us country code. Why should France use .fr if the United States can't use .us?

Re:Exactly, If foreign companys want an address

[AndrewRUK]

So basically, you messed up .us, so you want .com and that lot for yourselves? Why should the usa have any more right to the generic tld's than anyone else?