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.

Well, it is an EU country

[OptimizedPrime]

It is an EU country, so it's less surprising. While I don't like the laws, we have been making a lot of laws and treaties with other countries, and the EU in paticular that are designed to protect US patents, copyrights and trademarks. Overall, its the result of Microsoft and the others trying to inflict their copyright laws, EULA's and such on the global market, only to have the global laws come back home to us. As a side note, IANAL, but I believe British copyright and trademark claims have always been recognized in the United States, and this is basically an extension to other countries. I think the base law is flawed, as are the laws that allow big corporations to take away valid websites from individuals or small companies, but the extension into the greater world doesn't seem that surprising to me.

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: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?

I've never understood part of this legal issue

[reemul]

I support the rights of corporations to protect their intellectual property, including rights to domain names containing trademarks. However, I don't think they should retain the right to those domains if they don't pursue them within a certain period. How did this retroactive ownership come about, when it doesn't exist anywhere else that I'm aware of in IP law? If company A produces a product called "tradenameA" but doesn't actually go forward with the process to own that trademark, in everything other than domain names they are just out of luck. If company B decides to trademark "tradenameA", company A doesn't get to sue to demand that it be given up, especially not years later. All company A gets to do is seethe.

Why can companies with established trademarks wait for years and years without registering a domain - which they were free to do at any time until someone else grabbed it - and then successfully sue to get the domain only after a third party got the ignored name? I'd give a company six months to a year after registering the trademark to have first option on all unused domains with that trademark, but after that their inaction would leave affected domains forever out of their legal grasp. Throw in a similar grandfather period for every other company starting from a fixed date, to cover all old trademarks that haven't yet been pursued. Past that date, their rights to that name are the same as anyone else, first-come first-served.

Especially now that large corporations can be their own registrar, there is just no possible excuse for them not pre-emptively registering any possible desired, unused domain name. For ($30/month? IIRC), any company can register every possible variant of a trademark they like, from common spelling errors to "-sucks" &etc. But if they don't take action, they give up their rights to future action. Simple as that.

ps - anyone want to help the process along with a GPL home registrar solution? Just download, compile, pay your monthlies, and you're ready to register vanity domains for all of your friends, co-workers, pets, to your hearts content. I'm sure there are some other requirements, but I'd suspect a large number of ISPs and decent sized companies and non-profits would qualify.

-reemul