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Man Sues Nation For Allegedly Seizing France.com, a Domain He Has Owned For Over 20 Years (arstechnica.com)
A French-born American has now sued his home country because, he claims, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has illegally seized a domain that he's owned since 1994: France.com. From a report: In the mid-1990s, Jean-Noel Frydman bought France.com from Web.com and set up a website to serve as a "digital kiosk" for Francophiles and Francophones in the United States. For over 20 years, Frydman built up a business (also known as France.com), often collaborating with numerous official French agencies, including the Consulate General in Los Angeles and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. However, sometime around 2015, that very same ministry initiated a lawsuit in France in an attempt to wrest control of the France.com domain away from Frydman.
Web.com locked the domain, and Frydman even roped in the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard Law School to intervene on his behalf. By September 2017, the Paris Court of Appeals ruled that France.com was violating French trademark law. Armed with this ruling, lawyers representing the French state wrote to Web.com demanding that the domain be handed over. Finally, on March 12, 2018, Web.com abruptly transferred ownership of the domain to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The company did so without any formal notification to Frydman and no compensation. "I'm probably [one of Web.com's] oldest customers," Frydman told ArsTechnica. "I've been with them for 24 years... There's never been any cases against France.com, and they just did that without any notice. I've never been treated like that by any company anywhere in the world. If it happened to me, it can happen to anyone."
Web.com locked the domain, and Frydman even roped in the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard Law School to intervene on his behalf. By September 2017, the Paris Court of Appeals ruled that France.com was violating French trademark law. Armed with this ruling, lawyers representing the French state wrote to Web.com demanding that the domain be handed over. Finally, on March 12, 2018, Web.com abruptly transferred ownership of the domain to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The company did so without any formal notification to Frydman and no compensation. "I'm probably [one of Web.com's] oldest customers," Frydman told ArsTechnica. "I've been with them for 24 years... There's never been any cases against France.com, and they just did that without any notice. I've never been treated like that by any company anywhere in the world. If it happened to me, it can happen to anyone."
The world was always about who got more muscle.
Between a private citizen and a government, the government usually wins.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Isn't this why there are top level .gov sites? I hope this guy gets his domain back or at least is rewarded substantial compensation for his loss. Web.com should also be penalized for just handing over a domain without notice.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
Wayback Machine confirms the site was pretty much a tourism / travel agency site for France. https://web.archive.org/web/20...
In what universe does French law apply to a domain hosted and managed in the US by a US company?
Apparently this one.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You know, this is PRECISELY why government TLDs exist. The .com TLD stands for commercial.
Is France going after every TLD now?
How about france.bargains?
france.coupons, anyone?
Perhaps france.mom should be surrendered...
france.singles certainly serves some governmental function
Or france.tattoo, needed by the Ministry of Tattoos to license and sell tattoo services.
The French government knew that they would lose the case in any court other than their own, so they put pressure on someone with no rights to the TLD to seize the property of its rightful owner.
Just be glad that you're not a Pacific island, a Greenpeace vessel or a goose.
The registrar handed the domain over. They could have said "no, we're not a French company and it's not a French TLD, kick rocks" but they didn't. The actual hand-over probably has nothing to do with French law.
Is this not a form of eminent domain, but at TLD level? Also, France is very big on pushing for control over regions as trademarks. For example, unless you are in the region of Champagne you can't user that as a label for your sparkling wine.
In many ways the guy owning the domain should have probably seen it coming and had a backup domain name? Do I think the people who decided to force control, instead of providing warning and discourse, aren't probably arrogant a holes? I do, but as the little guy what can your really do except make noise and just marketing a new domain. Hopefully he wins his case, but I am not too optimistic.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
On October 1, 2016 ICANN ended its contract with the United States Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and entered the private sector.
Citation: https://www.icann.org/news/ann...
Congress didn't renew the contract, the Republican majority congress... Thanks Obama!
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
It was implemented after the "Wild West" style of domain name registration, ownership, and transfer in the 1990s. The dispute goes through ICANN and is resolved by ICANN, not some French court. There's a section of the domain name dispute resolution policy specifically earmarked for trademarks. The trademark holder files the claim with ICANN, who receives evidence from both sides and grinds the wheels for a while, before deciding who ultimately gets the domain name. At that point, the registrar transfers ownership. France using the French court decision to pressure web.com to turn over ownership to them is probably illegal, even if they are correct that they own the trademark on "France".
(Also, I seriously doubt the French government holds a legitimate claim to the International trademark on "France". If that were possible, then China could register "China" as a trademark, and force all websites to cease using the word "China" in ways the Chinese government didn't like.)
The registrar handed the domain over.
The registrar did not own the domain. The registrar did not "hand the domain over." The registrar stole a domain they were paid to maintain a registry of. They stole what they sold from their customer to give to a foreign government.
The actual hand-over probably has nothing to do with French law.
Right, it has to do with US law. Specifically property theft, conspiracy to commit a crime, and possession of stolen property. The people responsible at the registrar deserve to be prosecuted and jailed along with all the other criminals.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What could he do, place a lien of the French embassy in Washington? It's extra-territorial so US law does not apply.
He's reduced to filing what is a effectively a nuance suit that will be settled for a pittance because he has no leverage.
Why is Snark Required?
Bush didn't have ICANN do anything. The US has the authority to seize domain names that are within its TLDs, like all countries do. Among those TLDs that are within the US's jurisdiction are .org, .com and .net.
It's not that the law applies, it's that web.com are wimpy piles of shit who rolled over for a tyrannical government.
The moral appears to be don't register domains with companies that are going to voluntarily transfer domains without putting up a fight.
I'd say the moral is: Don't apply for a trademark for "France" when there is a country that has been using that name long before your company France.com was around. Otherwise you loose that trademark to the country called France which then has every right to demand your domain France.com from you.
France.com wanted to much and lost everything. They have nobody to blame but themselves.
France can trademark its own name?!
Can you please explain why they shouldn't be able to trademark the name that they have been using for hundreds of years commercially?
And why some US company should be able to trademark it, even though France has been using "France" commercially for hundreds of years longer than that company has?
1) Since when did French trademark law have jurisdiction over American domain names?
2) Doesn't trademark law require you actively defend your own trademarks? 24 years of doing nothing about france.com is not very active.
It seems that France didn't have a trademark for "France", so they had no reason to defend anything.
But once France.com applied for this trademark, the country of France had to object to this trademark. The idea that some company controls the trademark "France" and can decide who can use "France" in a commercial setting is just ridiculous.
We shall sue them in France, we shall litigate on the seas and oceans, we shall litigate with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our domain name, whatever the cost may be. We shall litigate on the beaches, we shall litigate on the landing grounds, we shall litigate in the fields and in the streets, we shall litigate in the hills; we shall never surrender,
So france.com surrendered? Shocked, I tell you, Shocked.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."