New Ruling Makes Domain Name Theft Harder to Prove

vectro writes "This article from the San Jose Mercury News says there is a new ruling that you need more than a trademark to force someone to give up a domain name. The actual domain names in question were avery.net and dennison.net (Trademarks of Avery Dennison, the label company but also common last names), but this is a great precedent."

Comments

Right decision

[Tet]

I'm pleased to see this. It is without doubt the right decision, because:

• Avery Dennison is in no way related to network infrastructure, so they certainly shouldn't be granted exclusive use of a .net domain.
• As the article says, others have a legitimate claim on the domain. Just because it happens to be someone else's trademark has little bearing on anything. The domains aren't being used to infringe the trademark -- they're being used in a completely different context.
• There's only room for one of each domain on the Internet, and first come first served is as good a way of deciding who gets what as any other. Otherwise, domain ownership will turn into a farce, where the corporation that can afford the most lawyers always wins.

pffft

[Accipiter]

I don't think it's right to grab a domain (let's say ford.org), and wait for the company to pay you big bucks to take that domain from you. However, as in the case with earth.com, I DO think that the person who registered the domain, and is currently using it, has a right to continue using it under the name he/she chose.

These kinds of Corporations are the big bully in the schoolyard. They get a kick out of picking on the defenseless kids by the wall, and they get a domain name out of it too. Nice to see laws like this are being put into effect. (That earth.com deal really hit me.)

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Then you're part of the problem

[0xdeadbeef]

I've been reflexually registering domain names left and right which have anything to do with my work. This is annoying, time consuming, and expensive.

I don't know what you've been registering, but it sounds like what Colgate-Palmolive has done, registering hundreds of English words related to personal hygene.

If this is what you've been doing, then you're just as bad as a squatter! Except rather than extorting companies with identifiable names, you're snatching up the namespace to deny others entry into the market. A monopolist, rather than a thug, but still abusing the system.

They get no sympathy or support from me, and I'm suprised that they're getting it from folks in this forum.

We don't have sympathy for the squatters, we have antipathy towards the bureaucrats and corporate hucksters who think they have "rights" to particular domain names. They just don't seem to grok that DNS was not designed to protect trademarks, and trademarks were never intended to be implemented globally. Their own wrong assumptions are what's causing the problem. Squatters are no different than they are, just opportunists trying to make an easy profit.