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Language Translation Domain Name Claims

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the altavista-your-domain-name dept.

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*

3 of 302 comments (clear)

  1. Other potential complaints by GnomeAttic · · Score: 4

    I read that www.buttshappening.com is claiming to own the rights to www.quepasaterior.com. Frankly, I don't get it.

  2. In related news by jabber · · Score: 5

    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.
  3. Site differences by Albatross · · Score: 5
    WhatsHappenin.com said the sites are offering similar Web services and that the names could be confused by consumers. Quepasa.com offers weather, entertainment guides, search services, and horoscopes. WhatsHappenin.com said this is too similar to its own Web service.

    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.