Slashdot Mirror
Language Translation Domain Name Claims
Anonymous Coward wrote to us with a recent story in which Wired reports that whatshappenin.com claims that quepasa,com, being a mere translation of their name, is an infringement on their trademark. So, who wants to help me translate Slashdot into all of the major world languages? *grin*
I read that www.buttshappening.com is claiming to own the rights to www.quepasaterior.com. Frankly, I don't get it.
Foriegn equivalency clauses used to only matter if your trademark extended in other countries, which isn't as common as it seems. For every McDonalds, there are thousands of Joe's Local Trademarked Band.
But on the Internet, it's all international. Taking it to the extreme that whatshappin.com seems to want to take it implies that when you get a trademark, and take it to the internet, not only do you instantly gain an international trademark (because trademark's can be tied to a specific locality, such as a state), but, apparently, you gain every translation of the trademark???
This really shrinks the trademark domain! Furthermore, a quick spin around altavista shows "What's happenin?" -> French -> English as "Which is happenin?", which, silly as it sounds, would registering that as a domain name be an infringement because it translates to the same thing in another common language? (Note: AFAIK, that's not a babelfish blunder; the phrase pretty much translates equivalently. If not in French, then elsewhere.)
I think "whatshappenin" actually has a reasonable argument, founded in trademark law, although quepasa does as well. The problem is trademark law; in principle, it's a good thing, but a device that made things work well, keeping trademarks local until they are used on a large scale (how many college bands have the same, trademarked name, just live in different states?) no longer functions correctly on the Internet. Unfortunately, only a new international agreement could really fix the problem. In the meantime, if this goes to court, keep an eye on the result; it certainly will set precedents. Watch out, Le Monde (A major french newspaper that translates in english to "The World")... here comes the Boston Globe... both newspapers (same trademark domain), both translate to roughly (very) the same thing... lawsuit time!
Tinylimp has just spun off several small web-sites called:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com,
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ.com and
1234567890.com,
and stated that any website or company using any portion, or combination of constituents, of these site names, will be sued into oblivion.
That international web language is starting to sound like a sensible thing, almost.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
In America we simply use slashdot. To translate, we could simply type loudly and slowly S L A S H D O T !!! In spanish S L A S H D O T - O !!! In Russian S L A S H D O T - SKI !!! It works in the movies.
I can easily see the argument being extended even further, into synonym and implication.
Does a site called whatgoingon.com have to shut down, because the semantic meaning is the same as whatshappenin.com.
Can Oracle now sue Borland for having a product called Delphi? Seems Sun is going in a related direction, now that they hold StarOffice.
Say I create a site called tinylimp.com. Will Microsoft lawyers come screaming to my door, because the name implies theirs?
Maybe someone should just patent the Jungian psych concept of cultural archetypes, and settle it once and for all.
-- What a lovely can-o-worms, umm, container d'grubs, err, am I infringing a Disney trademark? Hakuna Matata!
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Das Slashdot (German)
Slash. Period. (British English)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
After a quick look at the two sites (I knew speaking Spanish would come in handy some day) I don't see how anyone could construe that the content of quepasa.com is a spanish equivilant of WhatsHappenin.com. Other than the same names the two sites are completely different.
WhatsHappenin.com is a listing of bars and live music events, and quepasa.com is a news page. I couldn't find any weather listings on WhatsHappenin.com. The entertainment section on quepasa.com had short news stories and links to other pages that might have information on events.
The only things they had in common were horoscopes and links to search engines. Neither of these are the main services for either page, and there must be thousands of other pages that also have these.
The main argument WhatsHappenin.com's suit is that people will confuse the two sites because the names are too similar. But laws right now allow two businesses to have the same name, if their products or services are different enough that people will not confuse them (IANAL). AMC (which makes Jeep trucks) sued a restaurant called Jeep's and lost because one sold trucks and the other sold cheese burgers. These two websites, in my opinion, are dissimilar enough that there should be no confusion between the two and this lawsuit is totally baseless.
"Taksim Nokta". "Bolu Nokta" can also be used, but we usually use "slash" as well...
Zigbee Central: A Zigbee weblog
"The sad part is, for most of us this is (was?) just a cool way to check out stuff that interests us, and see that others are interested in the same things. Why is everyone so afraid of that idea?"
The first part of the answer is found in your other paragraph about smoke and mirrors democracy. A lot of money and power depend on that illusion, which makes an example of true democracy about as welcome as Bill Gates at ALS.
The second scary part is the bit about "see that others are interested in the same things." This strongly reinforces what the government would consider geeks, cults, perverts, radicals, militant nut-cases, and consumer and labor unions. While we might see it as a celebration of diversity and an empowerment of the individual, to them it is a breeding ground of dangerous ideas and a weapon against established power. It is all of that and more.
This suit just seems a bit clueless. But expect them to extend as many legal claws into the internet as they can without getting them chopped off. Keep your axes sharp and handy.