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

Other addresses at risk too

[goombah99]

if evisa.com is at risk then there is also

ivisa.com and myvisa.com

which are also registered on who-is

and where does it end?

bluevisa.com, redvisa.com...

Re:Other addresses at risk too

[sconeu]

I mean, sure, you could go ahead and open a donut shop called "Radio Shack", but you'd just be asking for it.

Except that:

1. JSL does business dealing with ... visas. You know, those documents that allow you to stay in a country? The thing that the 9/11 hijackers got 6 months after 9/11?

2. JSL owned evisa.com since 1997. VISA applied for TM status in 1999.

Re: The AC is full of it here

[azaroth42]

Garbage. E-Visa is not a trademark of Visa.
They may have /applied/ for it to be a trademark, but that's not to say it is one -now- for them to be suing under. RTFA.

On the E-Visa.com website, under Legal it lists their trademarks as:

The trademarks, logos, and service marks (collectively the "Trademarks") displayed on the Visa site are registered and unregistered Trademarks of Visa and others. VISA®, the Three Bands Design Mark®, CLASSIC®, the Comet Design Mark®, the Dove Design Mark®, ELECTRON®, ENTREE®, the Impulse Design Mark®, INTERLINK®, the Network Design Mark®, PLUS®, the PLUS Design Mark®, and It's Everywhere You Want To Be® are registered Trademarks of Visa in the United States and other countries

Re:That's absurd.

[i-sob]

If you exchange your Visa for a MasterCard, you won't really be boycotting Visa:

Visa and Mastercard are really two names for the same economic enterprise, i.e. a group of 6000 banks. Of these, the same 50 or so big banks own, govern and make all of the competitive decisions for the brands called Visa and Mastercard.
From PBS

Visa and MasterCard are being sued by American Express and the DOJ for antitrust and by a a group of retailers for antitrust related to debit cards.

Re:Well

[FluffyOne]

evisa.com was registered first according to whois.

Where does that leave us?

Ronny

Re:Well

[stratjakt]

>> Now, you can argue that Visa shouldn't be allowed to trademark dictionary words, and you're probably right

Of course you can trademark dictionary words, or combinations of them.

Are you saying every company should make up some gibberish string of characters for every product or service they want to offer?

How would you like a alvnernmpal digelflorp?

A trademark only applies to the specific product or service, though. And it's only being violated if someone uses it for a similar product or service.

Trademarks are valuable not only to corporations, but to you. If you buy a Ford Explorer, you're getting a Ford Explorer. If I sold you a mo-ped and told you it was a Ford Explorer, I'd be guilty of fraud - because I misrepresented it as a trademarked good. If not for the trademark, I'd be innocent so long as there was a sticker on it saying 'Ford Explorer'.

In this case, if evisa offers credit, or some other financial services, they'd be fraudulently tricking people into thinking they're Visa.

But the name of the company doesnt matter. If you go to the website to apply for a credit card, you quickly realize that it's not the same company at all.

They aren't going to trick you into booking a vacation thinking that there's a gold card waiting in Tahiti for you.

No.

[autopr0n]

JSL has owned the "evisa" trademark in international category ic042 since October of 1999.

VISA has owned "evisa" in ic036 since august of that year. Why they didn't register evisa.com at the same time is beyond me, but in any event, they both have valid claims to the domain name, and JSL registered first.

Re:EFF is full of it here

[cicatrix1]

They couldn't have, because evisa.com started up in 1997... a full 2 years prior to visa's trademark application.

acbay.net

[GweeDo]

I had this kind of a thing happen with my domain acbay.net. I was using the term bay to mean a body of water and eBay threatened to take me to court over it! I wasn't doing anything with online auctions. I just didn't want people to have to type www.animalcrossingbay.net....that is just too long! This is crazy...legal departments suck!

Read the Court Document!

[Crazy Diamond]

Reading the 26 page court document you'll find that this guy negotiated the sale of evisa.com for $250k and apparently wanted more so Visa went to court. Also according to the court document, this guy also registered:

usadirect-online.com (USADirect is an AT&T trademark)

picturebookmaker.com (Picturebook is a SONY trademark)

Now usadirect.com is not an AT&T website and usadirect-online.com is no longer registered. The picturebookmaker.com was registered in 1995 so there's more to it but either this guy had a horrible attorney or the judge was asleep the day they explained those two domain names.

While this is a small business, it has a total of one employee... the owner. He also has two corporations. You incorporate in Delaware to keep corporation officers anonymous. You incorporate in Nevada to avoid paying income taxes. So what does this guy do? Incorporate two companies. He owns the Delaware one directly (anonymously) and the Delaware one owns the Nevada one. The Nevada one is the company that holds evisa.com and "operates" it.

EFF should not have taken the case

[smiff]

The defendant in this case looks like a sleazy cybersquater. According to page 10 of the court ruling, the defendant has registered a number of domain names with trademarks in them. He registered usadirect-online.com (which has AT&T's USA Direct trademark in it), picturebookmaker.com (which has Sony's Picture Book trademark in it), and jserv.com "which according to the defendant's deposition was supposed to call to mind the COMPUSERVE trademark".

Also on page 10, "JSL stated on its Web site that it provides e-commerce, Web site development, and payment services, including online credit card processing. After Visa International filed this suit, JSL removed the reference to credit card processing".

On page 8, defendant says, "[f]or the right price, evisa.com might be available, but I'll have to check with a couple of people, one of whom is in Japan and one of whom is on vacation." He later admitted that this was a false statement because he did not have to check with anybody. He turned down an offer to sell the domain name for $50,000, instead demanding $250,000.

While I suspect the judge's ruling was based more on the fact that the defendant was a sleazy bastard rather than on the merits of the case, I don't think the EFF should have taken the case. My guess is, if the EFF helps him overturn the ruling, he will turn around and sell the site to Visa. He's just using the EFF to get free counsel for his profit venture.

Re:EFF should not have taken the case

[jko9]

Wow! Now THIS is really amazing. When VISA made the point about JSL registering "other domains with trademarks in them" and then cited JSERV.COM, PICTUREBOOKMAKER.COM and USA-DIRECTONLINE.COM" I thought that such an asinine point could only serve to backfire against VISA. Imagine my surprise when the judge cited this very point - apropo of nothing by the way, since the current order does NOT rule in favor of VISA's motion for summary judgement on the cybersquatting issue. Imagine my amazement when someone on slashdot other than an anonymous corward repeats this same thing.

JSL has registered a number of domains, all of which are under active development or will be. We have never sold a domain. The domain names above contain ENGLISH WORDS, NOT TRADEMARKS. Can you grasp this idea? Visa simply went and did a trademark search on every word in every domain JSL owns, and then feigned outrage, as if I chose those domains for their resale value. I mean, come on, look at picturebookmaker.com. For that matter look at what used to be on evisa.com. Cybersquatters don't put up hundreds of pages of useful info - they just, well, squat.

But in any case, regardless of whether anyone wants to call me sleazy or not, the EFF is NOT INVOLVED in the cybersquatting complaint. JSL is on its own on the infringement and cybersquatting case (both of which are ridiculous, and we'll no doubt do fine w/o any help). The EFF is only trying to overturn this one ruling which could give VISA rights over the commercial use of domains and business names that contain the word v-i-s-a.

-Joe Orr
JSL