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JRR Tolkien: Return Of The Domain Name

Posted by timothy on from the there-never-was-much-hope dept.

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."

4 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. The gold rush is over by ObviousGuy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Imagine if homesteaders had their land taken away back in the 1800's by corporations who claimed that they actually had rights to the land, even though the corps never set foot on the land and had no interest in it until they saw how profitable the land was.

    --
    I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.
  2. Hold on a tic... by sillypixie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I hate to be unpopular, but the guy is dead, right? Does he really have the same rights to his name as somebody who is alive?

    Can anyone who's making money off their dead relatives make a case for the name? Seems to me that neither of the parties actually suing for or using the name actually *wrote* LoTR...

    Just an alternative opinion...

    Pixie

    --
    don't mess with those geekgrrls
  3. Too restrictive? by Call+Me+Black+Cloud · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I can write a book about Tolkien and title it "The Life of Tolkien". Why shouldn't I be able to get a domain name with his name, as long as I state I'm not he (or his heirs)? Businesses I understand - trademarks, etc. Maybe there should be a top level domain for "unofficial", so you'd have jrrtolkien.official and jrrtolkien.unofficial. A litter cumbersome but you get the point.

  4. it's what you do with the domain that counts by mabu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The key here is how you use the domain name. IF your use is non-exploitive of the entity, specifically if it's someone famous, you can potentially hold it. I.e. If someone named James Hendrix had his personal web page on jimihendrix.com, he'd have a good case to fend off the Hendrix estate, as opposed to pointing the domain to some site clearly attempting to capitalize on the famous Jimi Hendrix.

    A friend of mine actually had the domain AMERICAONLINE.COM for many years. He offered to sell it to AOL and they blew him off and expressed no interest. His problem was the domain was not in use and when he decided to put up a web page, it said, "This domain for sale". Within days of the site going up, he received a threatening letter from AOL's lawyers. I am not sure, but I think they scared him into giving them the domain. He screwed up by not having a legitimate web site that wasn't exploitive of AOL then he might have had a case to fight. But in this circumstance the guy basically snatched the name because it was available, so he was trying to take advantage of AOL's famous name. If he had a web site on that domain for example, that was a messageboard for "American's online" or something not exploitive of AOL's identity, he probably could have fought off AOL, or at least forced them to settle with him.

    Generally speaking, the law has been pretty reasonable in dealing with these cases. There are probably exceptions though.