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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."
I hope that Visa gets e-visa-rated in the ensuing lawsuits.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
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.....
Visa is not suing JSL because their website "evisa.com" dilutes Visa's trademark. They are suing JSL because their website dilutes Visa's "e-visa.com" trademark. Which Visa owns. Visa owns the trademarks to both E-Visa and to eVisa. Neither of which is in the dictionary, thank you very much.
EFF should be spending its time on a more worthwhile lawsuit. They'll go down in flames on this one: Visa is dead right.
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.
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.
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ivisa.com and myvisa.com
which are also registered on who-is
and where does it end?
bluevisa.com, redvisa.com...
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Visa will lose on appeal. Though eVisa provides SOME services also provided by Visa credit cards, their core business is entirely different and they are using the term "visa" in its common, not proprietary, sense. Unless Visa can produce some proof of eVisa's *intent* to derive value from the Visa mark (through internal communications or similar graphics), they'll lose.
I, for one, cannot imagine how someone might be mislead into thinking that they were utilizing Visa's credit services.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Garbage. E-Visa is not a trademark of Visa. /applied/ for it to be a trademark, but that's not to say it is one -now- for them to be suing under. RTFA.
They may have
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
Technology professionals: massive unemployment
Lawyers: massive employment
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Charlie Brown Yeah, right. Just hold the football.
Sigs are bad for your health.
Hmmm. My first thought when I see "evisa.com" is "Oh, another made-up company name." (Avaya, Agilent, etc.) My first thought when I see "eVisa" (or, for that matter, "e-Visa") is "government program to allow people to apply for visas over the net." That it's private rather than government doesn't substantially change that interpretation. If I were looking for visa help, I'd be happy to find a company that could provide it.
And you know, like most Americans, I pay for a good half the shit I buy by credit card -- more like 90% if you count using my debit card as well -- and both my credit and debit cards say "Visa" on them. And yet that is waaay down on the list of things I think of.
I I want to contact Visa over the net, I'll go to visa.com, not evisa.com or e-visa.com or whatever. You wouldn't go to eford.com to look at cars, would you?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Only in the credit card trade, I would imagine. Visa would have to either prove that their eVisa trademark is 'famous', or prove that evisa.com is in the credit card business to win this suit.
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.
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>> 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.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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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Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
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.
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.
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.