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.....

EFF is full of it here

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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.

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: 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.

-----------------

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.

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.