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Microsoft Files Dispute Against Current Owner of XboxOne.com
MojoKid writes "Microsoft might have one of the most talked-about products at the moment with the Xbox One, but would you believe it doesn't own the rights to the most obvious domain name to accompany it? Domain squatting is a real issue for companies about to launch a new product. If they register a domain before the official launch, people can find that and subsequently ruin the company's surprise. This particular case is different, however. The domain name wasn't registered just the other day. Instead, a UK resident registered the name XboxOne.com in December of 2011, long before Microsoft itself even likely had a definitive name for its upcoming console. So, what can a company do in this instance? File a dispute with the National Arbitration Forum, an ICANN-approved organization that specializes in dealing with these sorts of matters."
They's better change that ridiculous name instead.
Fork over some money, Micro$oft, if you want it that bad...
Question Reality, Find Your Own Truth...
Am I the only one that gets the GoDaddy.com spiel when I try to go to xboxone.com? Seems shenannigansy.
If the domain owner had actually been using the name (rather than just to show a default launch page) then I might have some sympathy for them. But those people who speculatively register thousands of domains just to extort money from legitimate users deserve to be sued.
Nobody should ever reward the bad practices of those douchebags. They are the equivalent of patent trolls.
At the moment, XboxOne.com isn't being used for anything, so it's in effect a squat.
You mean they don't have an active website. That doesn't mean the domain name isn't being used for anything. It has A and MX records. Even scanning the ports on the A records and finding nothing doesn't mean it's not being used. It may not respond to any except certain IP addresses.
Now I agree it's likely it's not being used for anything, but as the registrant of several domains which do not have websites associated with them (but DO have email and other services) I call nonsense (if not straight up libel) calling it "in effect a squat."
If you had a sensible naming scheme, this kind of shit wouldn't happen. Either make a unique name, or go the tried an tested 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., method. Xbox -> Xbox 360 -> Xbox One -> Xbox e^(i*pi) is starting to piss people off.
Whew. That was a close one. I have a y=1/(1+e^(-wx)) tatoo (well, the equivalent anyway). I hope to hell they don't use that naming scheme, I'm not ready to upgrade to the next chassis series just yet...
Even if the registration was legitimate, they still used a Microsoft trademark as a portion of the domain name. That is going to cause problems for the domain's owner even if the trademark XBox One didn't exist at the time of registration.
For what it's worth, I pulled up on archive.org and it was some sort of xbox fan site in the past. Depending upon the trail of registrations since then, it is doubtful that a domain squatter owns it.
C'mon guys, this guy just won the lottery.
I for one, wouldn't have guessed it'd be Xbox One, especially not 2 years ago. I Microsoft really wants this name, it's not difficult for them to pony up the dough. Even at 1.000.000$, for MS this would have been a good deal. Going the lawsuit way for someone as powerful as MS, is stupid, they're most likely just going to have haters against them etc.
On the other hand, I don't side with Cybersquatters or people who just purchase 10000 random domain names just because they want to prey on any-company-dot-com, but business is business, if you don't make it your own - it'll be someone else. That's the hard facts of life.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Isn't that the solution to the equation commonly used to model depletion of a finite resource ( say oil reserves )?
dQ(t)/Q(t)=Q(t)*(1-Q(t))
Or put another way, the rate with which you can deplete a resource is proportional to how much resource you have got times how much resource is left, where unity is all of it.
(The derivative of the depletion curve is the depletion rate curve and looks a lot like a gaussian bell curve, extending from negative infinity to positive infinity, peaking at 0.25, and having a total area under the curve of exactly 1; that is... all of it. )
I only wish more people understood the gravity of these equations.... ignoring their prophecy is going to be our undoing.
You impress me greatly by posting it.
I will post AC as I know this is completely offtopic, but I did want you to know there are others out there who have great respect for that little piece of math you just brought up.
anubi
I just bought xboxminusone.com -- wonder if they'll want that, too?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
were they? that is to say were they obviously trying to leverage that market? To an extent that's no different than say.. PS3Blog.net (a site I frequent and very very rarely write for) which leverages Sony's PS brand. Having not seen the site I would like to know what's on there? Are they impersonating MS? Or did the guy just pick a name that sounded like it would relate to MS to advertise his website that has to do with the MS Xbox console
Just another second banana
People buy real estate all the time in the hopes that it gains in value...why should domain names be treated specially?
Go ask any of the McDonalds, whose great-great-great-grandpa 200 years ago proudly called himself "Mr. McDonald", how he or she feels about the mcdonalds.com domain
Go ask Uzi Nissan what Nissan Motor Corporation did (is doing) to him over the name that he registered circa 1996. Uzi Nissan, having a computer shop, bought the domain name of his last name. Never mind that he _also_ had a car dealership called Nissan Motors in the 1970s, when Nissan Motor Corporation was still called Datsun.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
The guy registered a domain name *2* years ago, probably even before MS would look for a name for their upcoming console. This is just another (yet) case of a big company using its legal weight against the small people.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Easily solved. Just visit xboxone.com and you will immediately notice it's a parked domain.
I love my sig.
It's probably worth noting, XboxOne.com is way older than 2011, it's been around since the original xbox was released http://web.archive.org/web/20021115163519/http://www.xboxone.com/
Nissan as a company was NEVER called Datsun. Datsun is a brand name, derived from an early model called Datson. Nissan is short for Nippon Sangyo. Which was the earlier company name. Nissan as an abbreviation was invented for the stock market (like AAPL for Apple)
well, NOW it's parked after Microsoft brought the lawyers out of leashes and sicked them on the domain owner(s)...
looking on archive.org it seems it used to have an active site on it, for example this snapshot:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110207201840/http://xboxone.com/
OR this one, from the YEAR 2003
http://web.archive.org/web/20031225193949/http://xboxone.com/
root@127.0.0.1
I'm going to start an organization called ICANN, which is a shortening of "I CAN Nick any name I want" and sue ICANN for icann.org. They can change their flippin' name to ICANNT for all I care.
oops.. small case of "spoke too soon"/"foot in mouth", i realize this is from before the "domain created" date, so it must be the site maintained by the previous owners of the domain name, name that had expired by the time the current owner registered it.
Anyway, it's a proof that "XboxOne" was already used by someone else in the context of computer games related stuff even since the year 2002 and IMHO should have not been awarded as a registered trademark to MS...
root@127.0.0.1
WHOIS and Google reveal that he owns a total of 5 domains. Sure, he isn't doing anything with them, but he isn't some faceless "domain squatting corporation" either.
The guy seems to have been the director of a bunch of companies, so he probably understands business. I don't blame him for trying to capitalize on his good fortune. Microsoft will try to use their army of lawyers to either get the domain for free or at a value far below what it is worth to them. I hope he stands up for himself and hires a good lawyer, rather than settling for a derisory sum.
Uhhh...duh? For fucks sake there was already a system called the Xbox so guess what folks called the first one when the second one came out?
That is why I'm asking all of the Internet to join me in refusing to call the new Xbox anything other than Xbox S, S for Stupid God damned name that makes no damned sense, Xbox S for short. This bullshit was soooo thought up by the retarded marketing drones at MSFT that have taken over that company, nobody else would be that damned dumb as to name the THIRD system the Xbox...nope, not gonna say it, Xbox S.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The first Xbox came out, it was named Xbox, and everyone called it Xbox.
The second Xbox came out, it was named Xbox 360, everyone called it xbox, and started calling the previous one Xbox 1 to differentiate since nobody wanted to say Xbox three sixty.
The third Xbox is announced, it is named Xbox One, everyone realizes that Microsoft should stop hiring brain dead monkeys for their naming division.
Just an aside, I happen to know the guy who long ago registered the name "Gateway.com" for his computer/telecommunication business. This was back when it was just a telecommunication term. There was a company who made computers and also liked the term, they called the company "Gateway 2000". Eventually they realized that the year 2000 was fast approaching and that they couldn't stop it and by 2001 their name would look pretty silly. So they changed the company name to Gateway. And then they went after him because he was using "their" domain. Their lawyers made his life miserable, and as far as I know he "settled" but never got anything for his property that was taken except an agreement of some donation to "charity".
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Educated people wouldn't use GoDaddy anyway.
It was a fan site, they went down, squatter registered it, and now here we are.
Trademark law is on MS's side, they'll win this. If the guy is lucky, it'll be in ICANN's arbitration and he'll just lose the name. If he's unlucky, it'll go to US courts as a trademark issue and he may owe MS lawyer fees when he loses (which he will).
This stuff isn't a case of "First guy to grab it gets to extort whatever they want." Trademark law doesn't work that way. If someone has a legit trademark on something they defend, they are going to get it.
So if you register a generic name that a company wants, ya that you can pretty much charge whatever for. However if you own a domain that is their trademark, they'll take that away from you, if they want it.
Note that these sites are both from before the current owner acquired the domain, and both most likely infringe on Microsoft's trademarks through the use of the XBOX logos without permission. IANAL but I suppose the case could be made that the current owner wanted to build on the reputation of the old site, but seeing as how he hasn't done anything with it for such a long time that might be a stretch.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
They shouldn't do anything else but offer to purchase it from the owner, rather than trying to assert their ownership of it now that they actually want it. It's mind-boggling that big companies like Microsoft can't figure out to decide on a name for their product and register domains and trademarks BEFORE actually finishing it.
Signature intentionally left blank.
You don't need permission to use trademarks, if they're not being used in a manner likely to confuse consumers. Company names are also trademarks, but Slashdot isn't going to get in trouble for including "Microsoft" in this article. Whether the use of the logo in this particular case is likely to cause people to think it was an official X-box site is another question, but one that is only likely to be answerable by a judge.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Or the fact that HTC did the same crazy naming scheme and released the One X then doubled down next generation with what else but the One.
AnimePapers.org: Anime Wallpapers Handled With Care
I just hope they remember to also register the new console's unofficial name:
xbone.com
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
And their game console design division too, apparently.
Have you seen this thing? And that's even before mentioning the elephant in the room, the laughably suicidal always-online DRM requirement.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Don't want to just burn karma, but thanks for bringing Uzi's story to my attention.
Here's the link for anyone who would like to read baout it:
http://www.nissan.com/Digest/The_Story.php
And yes, Uzi Nissan still holds Nissan.com (it cost him a lot of money though.).
BlameBillCosby.com
The impression I got from the nissan.com story was that he tried to make a quick buck (when asked for a price, he said "I don't know, $15 million?") and when he realized that made him look bad he turned it around into a victim story.
Don't get me wrong, that doesn't excuse Nissan Motors' behavior. I was considering buying a Nissan Murano in 2005, and chose another brand specifically because of the nissan.com debacle. My wife emailed a copy of the vehicle we purchased instead to their customer service department with an explanation.
Thank you for the perspective. I hate cybersquatters, but assuming that Uzi was not cybersquatting and legitimately using the name, why wouldn't he ask for a few mil? I don't know if that is what he did ask for, but I sure would do the same if some multinational corporation suddenly wanted dotancohen.com from me. Note that I am not cybersquatting dotancohen.com but rather using it for the purpose for which domain names were intended, as was Uzi doing with nissan.com.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Honestly I don't see why that should make him look bad. Personally if some mega corp suddenly wanted my domain name, which I do use to receive mail at and to host some other personal stuff on which I can give people a memorable for, I'd ask for a pile of money too.
I mean why not? I have rights to a unique resource someone else has decided is valuable to them. They have no claim on it; I had the name first after all selected for my own reasons. Just like Nissan did, it was his last name after all a perfectly reasonably cause to choose it. Its going to inconvenience me and all of my contacts to change it; maybe not to the tune of a million dollars but its a thinly traded market if demand for it from entity like a Microsoft is high so should be the price.
I'll agree squatting and not using a domain should not be allowed; it is a limited resource there are only so many short, easy to remember, spellable names. Only the dipshits at TSA want to use name most users would need to enter character codes to type or use something like charmap and copy/paste to enter. Otherwise I think if you even so much as receive the occasion mail there and you have an even halfway credible reason why you selected the name in the first place, like "my first cat had that name" quality; it should be first come first serve.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I love the way registrars & ICANN encourages people to park and sell domains and then if a big guy comes along they just hand 'em over. You suppose He's going to get a refund of all his various fees (with interest)?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
When Vista was released I tried Vista.com and it was a very established data business, totally unrelated
to Microsoft. MS walked all over this domain name, I thought ah these poor people. I checked on the site
from time to time, the business model changed over the years to one of working with computer hardware.
Never once did they have a redirect to Microsoft due those coming to the wrong site which impressed me
as them never letting MS change their operation - yet vista.com does redirects to vistaprint.com now.
This XboxOne is MS's fault for not checking first before committing, get over it MS you failed again.