Slashdot Mirror
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."
Isn't this why there are top level .gov sites?
No. .gov is reserved for US Government agencies only. They are not available to other countries.
Most other countries use a second-level domain against their country level domain for Government specific sites, like Canada's .gc.ca domain.
Yaz
In what universe does French law apply to a domain hosted and managed in the US by a US company?
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.
The irony of Americans complaining about other countries laws trying to force extraterritorial jurisdiction, and on the Internet no less. You and all the parents just made my day.
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.
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.