Henley.com, Reznor.com. Is Your Name Next?

Here at Slashdot we tend to get certain things submitted a lot. Big companies going after "The Little Guy", especially regarding domain names seems to be one of them. Sometimes I feel bad for people because they owned trademarked names, but it looks like they are just squatting, but what about your name? Henley.com is being chased by Don Henley (thanks Netizen) and Reznor.com is owned by AJ Reznor being chased by Thomas & Betts. In each case, a person registered the name given to them at birth, but now a corporation wants to take it because they have a trademark. How do you protect your name?

Comments

theos.com

[ryanr]

Some folks may remember the story here several months ago about theos.com.

Seems there is a software company called theos, that wanted the domain. Currently, i belongs to Theo De Raadt, leader of the OpenBSD project.

The short version of the story is that Theo got to keep it, I believe primarily because the software company realized that Theo was more popular than they, and they would be doing themselves PR damage.

Why not .us?

[Robert Link]

Wouldn't a lot of these problems be avoided if private individuals sought domain names in the appropriate subdomain of .us? For instance, in my case, the nation is positively littered with "Robert Link"s, but I am most likely the only one in Charlottesville. Thus, robertlink.com or the like is probably going to be a source of conflict, but I doubt anyone would fight me for robertlink.chr.va.us (or whatever the appropriate subdomain for Charlottesville is).

We need to get over our .com fever and stop trying to use the DNS as a phone book. It isn't necessary to be able to guess a person or company's name to guess his/its domain name; that's what search engines are for.

-r

Re:They need to learn trademark law

[Pariah]

A while ago, I saw a feature story on an evening news show about a restaurant in Scotland called McDonald's. The McDonalds company sued to make the owner change the name, which turned out to be a mistake because the owner was THE McDonald of Clan McDonald, and Scottish law is pretty biased toward his side. McDonalds (the company) backed down pretty quick when they realized he had the power to force THEM to change the name of all their fast food joints (in Scotland), if he so choose.

Domain name rights, all thats needed is fair play

[substrate]

As long as you're not violating trademark law or extorting somebody domain names should be first come first serve. If an individual registers their surname as a domain name first its theirs, if a company registers their trademark as a domain name first its theirs. If somebody (a corporation, an individual or whatever) registers a domain name which is somebodies trademark and uses it to compete against them then the registrants rights to the domain name should be terminable.

Basically the way it should work comes down to a simple concept: Play fair. The way it presently works is also a simple concept: Carry the biggest stick.

Don Henley

[Follansbee]

Some years ago, I had a brief acquaintance with a man named Walter Taylor. His family founded the Taylor Wine Company in Hammondsport New York, which was purchased by Pepsi-Cola. They manipulated the law, permitting them to import Algerian wine by the railroad car, and mix it with the legal minimum of New York state grapes and called the resulting garbage "Taylor" New York State wine. Walter founded the Bully Hill Vineyards, which is a small estate bottled wine in Hammondsport. Although he never attempted to use his name in conjunction with the product, Pepsi sued to prevent him using his name anywhere on the bottle. They won; the also lost. Walter's next wine was called "Goat White Wine" and featured an original woodcut of his on the lable of a goat sticking out his tongue. The label read, "they can take my heritage they can take my name but they cant get my goat!" and was signed "Mr. X, the Secret Proprietor of Bully Hill Vineyards." Such is reality.

The solution is really quite simple

[Amokscience]

People are in the mindset of lastname identity.
Heh, the same last name you share with countless relatives and strangers.

There should be a new internet domain hierarchy for family domains, personal web pages, etc (didn't this happen a while ago?). That should fix part of the problem.

I'm really surprised people haven't thought about fixing the problem instead of the symptoms. The web lends itself to hierarchical organization and this isn't taken advantage of as much as it should.

Now for the people who use some big companies name for their website and run some sort of commercial venture... you're on your own. It's part of business to research before you step into possible legal troubles. Counterpoint: you're a big enough company to go after a domain name withlegal muscle... how come you didn't do that a long time ago? You missed the boat.

That said, I also would like to see the littles guys treated as equally as the big companies.

(And squatting is a no-no.)

They need to learn trademark law

[Ticker]

IANAL, but my father is.

My understanding is that trademarks typically only apply to the specific trade that it is associated with. For example, you might be able to use the term "FooBars", even if it's trademarked by a certain company, if the context you're using it in doesn't create confusion.

There are sometimes exceptions on very well known trademarks like "McDonalds". But I don't think that "Henley" or "Reznor" are very well known trademarks. I've never heard of either of them before.

Besides, these people have a legal right to use their names, unless their name happens to be McDonald and they're using it in the CONTEXT OF A TRADEMARK. The Henley site is a personal site. The Reznor site appears not to be, but I honestly don't think that matters because I doubt that Reznor is selling the same thing as whatever it is that Thomas & Betts sells.

I guess these companies are just hoping that the people won't be able to afford a lawyer to defend the proper use of their names.