Visa vs. evisa.com In Vegas

wessman writes "In October 2002, Visa (the credit card company) convinced a Las Vegas federal court to prevent the small business JSL Corp. from using the term 'evisa' and the domain 'evisa.com' for its website offering travel, foreign language, and other multilingual applications and services. The court ruled that the website--run by Joe Orr from his apartment-- 'diluted' Visa's trademark, even though the site uses the word 'visa' in its ordinary dictionary definition, not in relation to credit card services. Now, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is helping JSL with an appeal. The EFF has a press release available."

Comments

Overzealous...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's like San Fransisco suing eBay...

First post?

You can't trademark dictionary words!

[Junior J. Junior III]

I hope that Visa gets e-visa-rated in the ensuing lawsuits.

Proper ruling

[Anonymous Coward]

Judge should rule that unless Visa corp is in the business of distributing entry clearance permits for world nations, they must immediately change their name to something else.

They are diluting the normal outlets for visa applications and work permits.

This just in

[ekrout]

HOLLAND, MI -- Popular geek news site Slashdot (www.slashdot.org) has come under fire recently for featuring articles on the Visa, Inc. credit card company. Visa has trademarked any combination/permutation of the English letters "v", "i", "s", and "a".

Lawyers from both sides have slated a preliminary meeting and hope to settle outside of court.

Slashdot's head honcho, Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, was unavailable for comments. Members of his site appear to be concerned about dealing with Visa's behemoth legal team, and plan on purchasing hot grit and goat insurance just to be safe.

Stay tuned as further details from this shocking case come to light.

Other option

[unterderbrucke]

They could sue all the countries of the world for using the term 'visa' to describe papers that allow you to cross international borders.

Re:That's absurd.

[bumby]

Ehm, I have a trademark "is". So could you please remove those from your post.

my new domain name

[gymbrall]

I hope I don't have any trouble with my new website dedicated to internet macaroni.
I'm calling it e-macs.com or I might drop the dash. But it seems like I've heard that
name before...I think it's a text editor, or maybe an IDE, or a browser...

Oh well, I can just claim that they have dilluted their own trademark.

obligatory joke

[enos]

Conversation at the border:

"Do you have a visa?"

"No, I have a mastercard"

Dictionary

[Anonymous Coward]

visa n. 1. An official authorization appended to a passport, permitting entry into and travel within a particular country or region 2. A credit card company who exterminated previous definition..

Who saw this coming?

[Snork Asaurus]

Score of the Technology/Computer/Internet/Communications revolution at half-time:

Technology professionals: massive unemployment

Lawyers: massive employment

Lucy You should go into high technology. That's where the future lies.

Charlie Brown Yeah, right. Just hold the football.

From the article:

[RomikQ]

Visa convinced a Las Vegas federal court to prevent the small business JSL Corp. from using the term 'evisa' by presenting all court official with visa credit cards to demonstrate their ownership of the visa trademark.

Later that day, the judge assigned to the case was seen in a Jaguar dealership, obviously conducting an investigation into the visa case by using the above mentioned cards. He refused to comment.

Re:That's absurd.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm trading in my Visa for MasterCard. How about you?

What? Why would you trade an endorsement that allows you to stay in a country for a credit card?

The atomic particle formerly known as "electron"

[stevejsmith]

ALPHA CENTAURI, Universe--Today when Visa Corp. sued the natural laws of...well...everything in a federal court for infringing on their European trademark of "Visa Electron" the court orded the Universe to cease and desist producing, using, or even acknowlodging the atomic particle formerly known as "electron." Incidentally, the Universe came to a screeching halt everywhere except for Alpha Centauri where the whole Universe is pilled onto one atom with no valence electrons. More news at eleven.

domain dispute scoreboard

[quark2universe]

Mega-rich-corporation : 1,875,258
Some-guy-at-home : 0