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Visa vs. evisa.com In Vegas

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the registering-english-namespace dept.

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."

2 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. Read the Court Document! by Crazy+Diamond · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. EFF should not have taken the case by smiff · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.