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

That's absurd.

[mindstrm]

I mean, I know this is slashdot, and a million people are going to say the same thing...

but that's rediculous. A VISA is a very, very common international term NOT related to credit cards.
If the site was about any kind of financial transaction providing, I'd say this was completely justified.....

Re: The AC is full of it here

[LuxFX]

While USPTO.gov does state that Visa's Trademark application was roughly 2.5 weeks prior to the defendant's, the JSL (the defendant) application includes dates for first use and first use in commerce:

Visa's application: August 19th, 1999
JSL's application: October 6th, 1999
JSL's First Use/in Commerce: December 27, 1997

This handily beats out Visa's information, which doesn't include these dates at all. IANAL, but as far as I know the date of established use trumps date of application.

In fact, it could even be argued that JSL Corporation (the defendant) could sue Visa for dilution of trademark.

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