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

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.