JRR Tolkien: Return Of The Domain Name

Malfourmed writes "Reuters reports that the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien won a cybersquatting case against Alberta Hot Rods, a Canadian-based operator which registered jrrtolkien.com and linked it to its commercial celebrity Web site. The group - which has already lost domain name cases brought by actors Pierce Brosnan and Pamela Anderson, and author Michael Crichton - was found to have no legitimate rights, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said in a ruling."

Comments

they got what they wanted

[Anonymous Coward]

you know everyone just clicked onto jrrtolkien.com and saw all their ads. the company is making their money back.

all is well

Choo Choo

[puppet10]

You mean the railroad is coming to town?

Re:The gold rush is over

[LouisZepher]

Well, the original homesteaders had it taken away by people who eventually became said corporations. This is just Manifest Destiny in web form.

Internet Papparazzi

[SUJovian]

This company brands itself "Celebrity 1000" and sadly, they and many others like them are cybersquatting on at least that many celebrity named domains. just try a few of your favorite celebrities. I'm not sure how this was ever legal to start with, and can't believe that to date this is only the 4th case brought against these fools. They're the papparazzi of the internet, making free money off the endeavors of others.

If said homesteaders

[KalvinB]

bought the land with the intent to profit off of the name of the corporation then yes, I'd expect as much.

People need to get it through their thick skulls that trying to profit off of other people's names is not acceptible.

If the guy's name was Tolkien then he might have a case. As it is, he's just typical low life internet scum trying to profit off of other people's name.

Ben

Re:Hold on a tic...

[Drakon]

People who are looking for porn know where to look. Porn sites who buy domains that have nothing to do with porn should be outlawed. If not because they make it harder to find things that should be on those domains, then because they make it harder to find porn. ;-)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:The gold rush is over

[Chess_the_cat]

Tolkien is dead. His estate is in charge now and they're very much a company. Regardless, I say if you registered the domain it belongs to you. What about that guy who was able to pick up hotmail.co.uk because Microsoft forgot to renew it? I say he should be under no obligation to return it. Same with guys who register celebrity names as domains. If it was important to the celebrity they should have something in place to protect the domains. Unless you think that companies and celebrities should be able to jump the queue and be able to take domains away from people at the time of their choosing. As an interesting aside, I remember an article in Wired years ago about how people were registering trademarks as domain names. Wired called McDonald's and told them that a guy registered mcdonalds.com and their response was "So?" Back then no one understood the Internet. Of course, some time later McDonald's strongarmed the guy into giving it back. No fair.

Re:The gold rush is over

[deathcloset]

I always wondered, why can't someone older than, but with the same name as, johnny depp claim intellectual property rights to www.johnnydepp.com ?

After all, older johnny had the name before younger famous johhny...right?

I mean, couldn't these sued-squatters at least have bought a fish, named him j.r.r and claimed the website was about their sea creature? would that have been all they needed to retain rights? or would they have needed a dog? perhaps a little boy?

I ask, because I know for a fact that there is another celine dion out there, and in my opinion she has just as much right to celinedion.com as the famous one who successfully sued for it (but has not the money as the vegas-diva name-counterpart).

heck, isn't there another j.r.r tolkien out there with rights to this domain? are any of the hiers even named j.r.r or John Ronald Reuel Tolkien for that matter ?....well, actually probably not...actually, there is probably never going to be anyone named that again (considering the google search of ""John Ronald Reuel" -tolkien -tolkin -tolkein"" still yielded hobbit-rich results)..... ......but you see my point!

ah, the shackles of the internet are starting to leave marks.....

...and Rob & Jeff invented the slash and the d

[Muddie]

I don't agree with the whining people who moan because of cybersquatters. Those that put into common use the // in a hyperlink and the . before the domain extension could, in theory, say that slashdot is unfairly using their property to prosper. I, personally, think it's a 'first-come, first-serve' situation.

If someone yanked 'mcdonalds.com' and was using it to slander mcdonalds, sue them for libel, but they have the right to rent that domain for as long as they pay for it. This babysitting by the courts for corporate welfare is just over the line. I don't know why I'm so outraged by the very idea of this, but I am.

/opinion

How is this different?

[caffeineHacker]

SCO: We own all you source code!

Slashdotters: How so? We wrote it!

SCO: We just do!

Compared to:

JRR Tolkien Estates: We own that domain!

Sqautter: How so? I bought it!

Estates: We just do!

Although squatting is sleazy, I don't see why it's illegal. If there are magic reserved names that the general public can't buy then don't sell them in the first place. The guy bought it before JRR Tolkien estates, and made no reference to JRR Tolkien or LoTR so no trademark infringement occured. For all they know he could have thought it sounded like a l337 name for a porn site. So the lesson learned is that corporations have control over you no matter where you live, thanks to the U.N. and WIPO. It's just another example of a company saying they own something that they don't.

Re:The gold rush is over

[stwrtpj]

Tolkien is dead. His estate is in charge now and they're very much a company.

And naturally, as a Big Evil Company now, they're not entitled to the same rights as everyone else. Now, if we were talking about a domain that had a generic name, like onering.com, I might buy the argument. But jrrtolkien.com is extremely specific.

What about that guy who was able to pick up hotmail.co.uk because Microsoft forgot to renew it? I say he should be under no obligation to return it.

Explain your logic to me. What other use would someone want with a domain called hotmail except to screw MS? Or is this one of those "anything that screws MS is good" things? Note this is NOT the same as creating a domain called hotmailsucks.com or screw.this.hotmail.crap.com. Those are very obvious alternate uses of the hotmail name and I would agree in that case that they should not be taken away. To use a more relevant example, if the domain we're talking about was jrrtolkiensucks.com, then I'd lean towards the owner of the domain. But there is no reason to hold jrrtolkien.com except to 1) screw over the Tolkien estate and/or 2) lure people to your site making them think they were going someplace that actually had something to do with the author.

Same with guys who register celebrity names as domains. If it was important to the celebrity they should have something in place to protect the domains.

I would agree if the site was not EXACTLY the same name as the celebrity. If it were, for example, fansof[celebrity-name].org, then I'd say okay.

I don't care for frivilous cases of strong-arming domain names from people. At the same time, however, the rules, whether they be actual laws or just plain ettiquete, should be equal for all. Registering other people's trademarks and names as domain names (and I do mean names that are clearly distinctive trademarks and not common names that just happen to be parts of trademarks), in my mind, is breaking the rules.

Rather than upsetting the applecart

[FreeUser]

I think .com should have this rule put into effect (like on so many other registries), then have some major cleaning up done and those who didn't have a registered name (i.e. free-viagra-now.com) be moved to the .info registry.

While I agree that such a rule would have been nice from day one, it does have its problems.

1) trademarks are not unique
a) they are limited by "domain" (e.g. Macintosh(tm) for apples can exist in parallel with Macintosh(tm) for computers)
b) they are limited by geography (e.g. in the US, I can own "SourceMagic"(tm) in Illinois, while in Wisconsin someone else may have the same trademark for the same "domain", and national trademarks for x in Germany can be owned by one company, and a completely different company may have the same exact trademark registered in Canada or the United States).

This works for national domains, such as co.uk, where (a) there aren't state or local trademarks, only national trademarks (or they only allow national trademarks to use the domain), but it won't work for most trademarks in an international domain such as .com regardless.

Now, if one wanted to make a .tm domain, e.g. uk.tm, us.tm, etc. then it would work pretty well, but that assumes (a) .tm isn't already a TLD for some country (I haven't checked), (b) each country administers its .tm according to its own trademark laws, and (c) it won't matter unless we can get the f*cking lawyers out of the other domains and into the .tm domain where they belong (good luck getting parasites out of anything).