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Domain Registrars Not Legally Responsible for Domain Names
mike_markley writes " CNN has an article that talks about a suit that Lockheed Martin filed against NSI over a domain that allegedly infringed upon Lockheed's copyrights. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals decided that NSI wasn't responsible for trademark infringements such as this. " Good - the Court's basis was recognizing the need for registrants to move with speed, unlike the trademark office.
I wonder if it'd be ok if you registered a domain like "microsoft-tm-trademarkisthepropertyofmicrosoftcor porationallrightsreservedyaddayaddayaddl egalstuff.com". It's got a disclaimer built right in!
If your trademark look much like the registered trademark there would be an allegedly infringement. Sun is knocking on people's door when they use the word JAVA in their domain names. So if you only check against your database for the registered names, that's still couldn't free your ass from trouble.
Of course, we're missing another aspect of this, and that's the squatters themselves. Lord knows that even /. has this problem, with slashdot.com being used by a company that never mentions the actual term "slashdot" or slashdot.net, which uses an entire domain for little more than one HTML page and an MX record.
As a DNS administrator, I've got my own personal problems with cybersquatters ("We need 45 zone files added *today!*"), as all it does is gum up the works, waste time, and flush more money (not mine) down the toilet. I know for a fact that the bulk of them are unused, as well.
For that matter, I'm waiting for one group to drop a domain that they've been squatting on for years now, as they're certainly doing nothing with it. These people are like the used car salesmen of the internet (no offense to those good-hearted used car salesmen out there.) in that they're taking something and selling it for far more than it's worth. Not to mention that it's already tainted goods by the time the squatter sells it off.
I doubt I can pull up a decent example of a true squatter, as most of the cases I've seen that aren't on my own personal crusade are small companies that are fighting off a lawsuit to preserve their own business, which of course, has the misfortune of sharing their name with some huge corporation with money to burn. (Yes that was a run on sentence. I'll fix it when I'm paid to write comments here.)
Suffice it to say, when you go to www.widgetco.com, and it doesn't exist, but the domain is registered, you probably won't head back there again looking for WidgetCo. When WidgetCo finally buys back that domain (for a lot more than $70, I might add), it's already too late, as no one really plans on heading to that URL, and most of us will have bookmarked www.thewidgetcompany.com or something like that.
That level of cybersquatting sickens me, and if the overall DNS system were better established for a less-than-ideal society, this would be much less of a problem. Unfortunately, NSI's attitude of taking the money, and asking questions later, if at all, has probably aided in the deconstruction of the useful WWW. Personally, I'm all for the tm subdomain for country codes as a result. Too bad it probably won't take here in the US, where every company needs "Global Market Penetration" as well as a few hundred other buzzwords that are little more than pathetic excuses to shave off two characters from a domain.
Christopher Kalos
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
That happened to me once (right before karma went into effect). My one and only first post was moderated down before I even got to see it. I did learn my lesson though - I mostly focus on trying to write well written posts that might get me a point or two.
Then I'll be eligible to moderate... buwahahaha... I mean, uh, so I can encourage thoughtful posts.
But what about that small shop at the bottom of the road called "Kodak Local Shop(TM)" ... why do they have to be satisfied with something other than kodak.com???
.net address and maybe a few similar ones. Then force companies to only register in their home countries ... (and for preference it would be good if the individual country registrars enforced some kind of logical scheme -> if you want a .ac.uk address you'd better be an academic site!).
...
Frankly I think the best option would be to get rid of all the TLDs that aren't country designations. I'll be generous and allow internic to retain a
Unfortunately this is never going to happen -> too much fiddling about required (not to mention all the lusers who'd get confused!), but still I can always dream
Take a large barbed hook and cram it up your ass, tie one end of a rope to the hook and the other end to a semi truck, remove the slack from the rope and then have the truck driver pop the clutch.
Thank you.
Moderation recommendations:
Score: -1, Troll
Actually, you just tickled my brain... Trademark law is pretty specific about how trademarks can be used, i.e. you can't say "The Xerox is broken", "Go make a Xerox", or even "Do you have a Kleenex?". It's supposed to be Kleenex (TM) tissue, Xerox (TM) copier, Kodak (tm) film or Kodak (tm) paper. And yet, http://www.kleenex.com goes to Kimberly-Clark's web page about all the various Kleenex (TM) brand products. Isnt' using kleenex as a domain name treading on think ice vis-a-vis proper use of trademarks under trademark law?
>Shouldn't Kodak be allowed to translate that identifying mark to the Internet?
No.
Not unless they have secured unambiguous trademark rights in every independant nation of the world, as well as in every sector of the economy in those nations that make such distinctions (as does US trademark law). If they do that, then *maybe* they could assert such a claim.
Otherwise, they have no more compelling right to the name than does some guy named Zolar Kodak who runs "Kodak's Canoe Rentals" in the middle of the jungle of Booga-Booga Land. The principle of first-come-first-served is the only reasonable way for the system to operate. Certainly a corporation with the resources of Kodak (the photography-related one) could probably arrange to come to a mutually acceptable resolution with Mr. Z. Kodak if they cared enough about a domain name which he had registered, but suggesting that they have superior rights to the name because they are a large US corporation and his is a small Boogan corporation is utterly preposterous and demonstrates an astonishing degree of US-centrism.
- Paul
These sorts of disputes are precisely what trademark law addresses in the "real world." Since these disputes also occur on the Net, don't the same arbitration procedures seem to apply?
No.
Trademark law in the Real World is very specifically limited in geographic scope. It has to be. There is no legal authority that every nation of the world is obliged to respect. The DNS namespace is inherently global in scope. Shall we hold it accountable to the trademarks registered in every country in the world, many of which overlap and contradict each other? Shall we decide that one country's system of registered trademarks should be definitive world-wide? (If so, then whose? Russia's? France's? Iraq's? The United States'?)
No, we shouldn't. It is inherently inappropriate to apply trademark law to the DNS namespace, and any attempt to do so will be unjust, arbitrary, and painfully unworkable.
- Paul
In any case, I feel a lot better about made-up words being trademarks -- people's names and common words/phrases shouldn't be removed from the language just to protect some corporate interests!
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The other night I was surfing and decided to enter my full name as a URL. Fortunately, no one else has registered my full name. But I can see a world in which someone else registers my name and uses it to present inflammatory or objectionable material. The problem: I'll get spammed/fired/not hired/sued/etc. over a mistaken identity which I have no control over. Should the NSI be held responsible? Not really. However, those individuals who have no legitimate claim to a name should not be able to keep a domain name that infringes on someone else's trademark. Fortunately, slander is already against the law. But cyber-squatting is not, and it hurts those with a genuine interest in protecting their reputations, while serving the interests of only the cyber-squatters. Why should anyone have to pay exorbitant fees to a third party to use their (already) registered trademark on the 'net. Isn't the internet supposed to be a medium free from the burdens of censorship? Doesn't a cyber-squatter restrict free speech by charging a company (or organization, or individual) for the internet use of THEIR OWN NAME!? While we shouldn't hold NSI responsible for this, we should hold individuals responsible.
On a side note: It wouldn't be too difficult for the NSI to check a database of uncontested trademarks before issuing a domain to an individual, and this step could have keep NSI from the expense of lawyers every time a major company decides a domain name violates their trademark. Such a database wouldn't be very difficult to create/maintain, either - just look at the DNS. No, they couldn't check every trademark - but they would probably catch enough cyber-squatters to deter the practice.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Well, I think that it is a stretch to say that the NSI is not capable of handling trademark disputes. But, you are right, they would probably do a pretty poor job.
I also agree that they do not have legal power to settle the disputes. That doesn't mean, however, that they should not be liable for ignoring Lockheed's complaint and at least attempting to make a decision. They could possibly learn to do trademark decisions (non-binding on the parties of course, but can filter out obvious infringement).
Oh well, too late.
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The only problem here is persuading Coca Cola that cocacola.com should be free for the taking...
.com domains, even if they are international and if you have set aside a .tm.us space. For example, what about a situation where a strictly US company registers a .com that infringes a US trademark? The international argument is sort of moot.
If you are going to enforce trademarks at all, why restrict it to just a slice of cyberspace? The motivations for enforcing trademarks still apply to the
The problem with all of this is first that there is no way to stop using domain names, simply because hardly anyone would use the internet again. Though that almost seems preferable.Second, there is no way to register domain names with background checks (what a one month waiting period?) that would be acceptable to everyone. the best solution i can think of is every time a trademark is awarded, give the domain name along with it.
A blog about stuff.
A good solution. After all, if I have to use the (tm) when refering to Microsoft Windows(tm), shouldn't the internet be the same way? If Microsoft is bound to use the (tm) every time they mention their product name in printed documentation, it should be part of their domain name as well....
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I agree with the idea of trademarking domain names for some odd reason. I hope this generates plenty of reasons for me to go against it, but, you can't name a new product with a trademarked name, why should you it be any different with domain names? I don't like being misled.
More appropriate moderation suggestion for that last post:
Score = -5, Jackass
There needs to be a creation of a new TLD for trademark holders only. A domain will be included with the trademark when it is registered. This will prevent everyone and their mother from trying to register it. I know there's going to be some bitching that someone has a .com, .net, .org, .whatever but to get something you have to give something. I don't know why big business always has to have it's way. This idea would do a lot to prevent all the waste and harassment caused by so many lawsuits on this issue.
Microsoft does NOT have to use (tm) in order to keep its trademark. It merely puts the world on notice that they have a presumed federal monopoly on the name (for certain uses).
OK but how about General Electric, General Motors and Wall Street Journal? These have very common words but imply an particular entity (in some cases, world-wide).
Should there be a free-for-all for www.generalelectric.com?
Granted, there may be a General Electric Company of Hendersonville, Indiana. But, when I type www.generalelectric.com in New York, Altanta, or Seattle, it is more likely that I intend to get GE than the small shop in Indiana.
These sorts of disputes are precisely what trademark law addresses in the "real world." Since these disputes also occur on the Net, don't the same arbitration procedures seem to apply?
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
fuck off
I just work here... :P I agree. this whole thing is rather rediculous. Domain names really mean this much? It's rather silly if you think about it. Nobody cares if you name your kid barbie, but certainly if you name your computer such a heavily protected name(or a section of Ireland McDonalds), it is quite illegal. Why not just create a seperate DNS system with only a slight modification, with say an extra bit set? Donno... something I've been mulling over personally for a little while. Wonder what other geeks think :)
"Hex, Bugs, and Rockn'Roll"
To a large extent, trademarks are geographical entities; I wasn't arguing that they weren't.
I believe there is a trademark is a valuable commodity - particularly in cyberspace. So, the DNS namespace should be structured to protect that commodity.
It is not responsible or sufficient to say "we're not playing by your rules." Regional authorities regulate all sorts of activities of their citizenry on the Internet. The DNS namespace should be structured to respect those authorities and the protect the commodity.
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
It still looks like the same ol' Big-Business-With-Trademarks-Will-Always-Crush-The -Little-Guy policy. Are we truly safe now?
JEW!!!!
Oh you are? To the showers then.
We can use the .tm domain for these things. All somebody needs to do is get the rights to the domain from the local dictator. I understand that he is the sort who likes to put up big pictures and statues of himself all over the place: the price of registering the trademark could be the donation of his image, which would be placed somewhere together with an ad for the corporation. In this way, businesses can both subsidize the state apparatus's propaganda efforts, freeing up money for socialist construction, and market their products to the people of Turkmenistan.
:P
Sorry, had to try for the only first post I'd ever get in my life. :P There goes my karma, but at least I can brag to my friends. heh
Seriously it does figure that NSI wasn't held responsible. Why should they? They're not the ones who are doing the copyright infringement. The person who is hosting the website is, thus go after them!
Of course I know why they dont go after them. The person with the site is probably just some regular joe schmoe who doesn't have much money. NSI on the other hand is a real company with real money, so it makes sense to sue the people you have a chance on actually getting something other than the URL from.
But, it doesn't address the underlying problem -- trademarks and domain names don't mix. Paramount, for example, has a trademark on the letter Q. Don't use that in your domain name! In fact, basically every word you can think of is someone's trademark. If that means that they have the exclusive rights to any domains containing that word, the whole system is going to break.
I'm not sure what the fix is: trademarks are a pretty good basic idea. But they were meant to work within specific areas of commerce, and be limited geographically. It doesn't scale up to a national level, let alone a worldwide one -- and it gets even worse when companies of totally different types are in competition for the same ".com" domains.
(A side note -- I don't mean to be pedantic, but trademark is very different from copyright. The
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It's really only right that the NSI not be responsible for "cybersquatting" on patented names.
/fscking/foobar...)
When you think about it, if they had to screen every name for possible copyright (et al.) violations, then nobody would ever get a domain name... we'd all be asking for static IPs and advertising them like phone numbers!(For you free foobar... dial 192.168.6.9. extension
Personally, I believe that the person registering the name should be the only one responsible for copyright infringment.
As for name dispute resolution... that's a different matter
some karma... and kinda lukewarm about it.
This is definately a good decision. Lockheed wants NSI to become the judge for trademark infringement; they want NSI to take alleged cases of infringement and decide whether or not it really is with the knowledge that the company trying to block the name probably has more legal and financial power and can sue for damages if a court disagrees. The courts should have control over the decision all the way, not some private organization. Especially not NSI.
The ruling recognizes the need for speedy, high-volume registrations of domain
names, said Ronald L. Johnston, lawyer for Network Solutions.
Yup, This is all about the money. Of course NSI like cybersquatters. Squatters not only directly pay NSI for all the names they gobble up, but indirectly pay them by getting companies who really want them to gobble up every permutation of their precious trademark.
It's a double win for our favorite DNS registrar.
It has been a common practice for companies alleging trademark infringement in domain names to also sue NSI. I don't think that NSI has ever been held responsible. /. story from a while back about how some Court was the owner of several offensive domain names. NSI, in order to continue its luck in avoiding liability, routinely gives domain names to the Court as soon as there is a suit regarding the domain. That way, their hands are clean.
This is related to the
Apropos to this, HR1225 was up for discussion in the U.S. House today. If it's not a law now, it will be very soon. This is a law with bi-partisan support that establishes trade-marked names and phrases in domain names as falling under similar, if not the same, rules as trade marks in any other published form.
Personally, what I fear the most about this bill, after having heard a few congressmen talk today, was the perspective these representatives are taking. Their concept of names and other trade-marked items as possitions that others are not allowed to have, though highly entrenched in the current system, seems so much more of a broken view to me than the notion that trade marks are more of a formation of identity, so that unathorized use of trademarks is a forging of identity and misleading of consumers rather than appropriation of property.I'm curious to hear if the practical effects of current laws could be the same under this newer view point, as it would certainly seem to make future changes easier.
-hm
Of course it's not the registrar'r job to enforce trademark law. If I put an advertisement in the newspaper, it's not the newspaper's job to research whether I'm entitled to use any trademarks that are present. Heck, it's not even their job to research what words and symbols are trademarked.
If everyone registered a .tm.us (or .tm.anycountry) domain, people would start to use them. The DNS system was created to *prevent* a keyword-based system, but that is basically what it has become. People type www.keyword.com, becase most of time (at least with large companies) you find the page you're looking for. But that's not always the right page, sometimes it ends up being a porn site / cybersquatter / etc. - if people know they can type www.company.tm.us and find the company (since a porn site does not own the trademark, they couldn't register the domain), they will get into the habit of doing this. It would no longer matter who owns the .com domain, and we wouldn't have problems like do have now.
.tm.us domain, you need to show proof that you own the trademark. Just forget about .com completely when dealing with trademarks - this probably won't happen, but it would be easier for everyone.
The point of this is to avoid having to enforce trademarks - if you want a
Could you imagine how long it would take to register a domain name if the registrar had to check against all possible copyright or trademark infringments?
nevermind. another impulsive stupid post.
The whole suing back and forth for silly things like this, and trying to place the blame on people who are so obviously not responsible for these type of things is just inane, and one of the major reasons why people in other countries laugh at the U.S. in^H^HJustice system.
".. I like pork!"
".. I like pork!"
- Brak
It seems to me that if there is a dispute over some trademark and both parties have a claim to the trademark in some domain, they should both be required to disambiguate and neither should retain the plain name.
So, instead of a dispute over "apple.com", both the record company and the computer company might have to pick more specific domains: "apple-computer.com" and "apple-records.com", with "apple.com" unassigned or possibly a directory of companies with "apple" in their name.
Sometimes, the distinguishing identifier would not (just) be the product but the geographic area. In tat case, the ".us" could be used, or it could get added to the domain name: "acme-paints-nyc.com", or "acme-paints.nyc.ny.us".
The key point is that neither party in a dispute should own the ambiguous domain name and both should be required to disambiguate. Note also that this does not require any technical or administrative infrastructure; the disambiguated domain names don't need to be in a hierarchy or follow any particular naming convention, they simply must distinguish the disputed trademarks clearly.
Network Solutions Inc., the principal registrar of names ending in .com, doesn't control or
monitor the millions of names it approves
Then why is Network Solutions currently being sued for restricting the registration of so called "dirty" domains?
The GNU website reports that the House of Representatives is going to vote on a bill that, if passed, is guaranteed to make us go through more of these nonsense lawsuits.
Why don't people realize that domain names were never intended to be identified with any sort of trademark? To refresh your memories, the domain name system was introduced so that we wouldn't have to remember awkward IP addresses. But it looks like this reason has been totally forgotten/ignored in the mad rush to "appropriate" a piece of the web.
I, for one, hate this attitude of rushing to register every damned domain that you can lay your hands on. Lots of these companies/trademark holders go on a wild spree, not only registering their trademark in all the TLDs (top level domains), but also registering all sorts of variations of their trademarks, including typographical errors, misspellings, etc. Most registrars actually encourage this! I am appalled. The .com domain has become totally corrupted with all sorts of websites that can hardly be described commercial. Same goes for the other TLDs.
Stop the trademark-domain crap already!
Sreeram.
A friend and I were looking at different domain names after we saw what some of them were going for on ebay, and I found that fu*kme.com (The * is really a C, don't know how /. handles swears) had become available. So I figure, sure, that's gotta be worth something. I register it, then about 2 weeks later I get an email saying that NSI refused to register it! The actual email is below.
So, if NSI is not legally responsible for when certain names are registered, yet they can refuse on other grounds. While I'm no lawyer, that seems a little odd.
"Network Solutions doesn't review the names that people are trying to register," Johnston said. "This is critical to the growth of the commercial Internet."
If NSI doesn't review the names, then how is this explained?
Yet another law to help out the lower/middle class in the US. Geez, when are they going to stop making all these laws to help out us small people. There was that Digital Millenium Copyright Act, all these great laws to protect corporate secrets, patents on software/DNA, and now this? WOOOHOOOO. I wonder when they're going to start giving a little bit to the upper class? These types of moves are just so damn benificial to us. God damn, I love this country and I'm proud to be an American!!!!! I can't wait to be forced by our friends, the government, to go off and fight in a war because our other friends, the corporations, think oil prices are too high. GO AMERICA!!!! LAND OF THE FREE!!!! HELL YEA.
You know what's at the heart of the whole com/net/org mess? Mis-management.
.ca honchos should get together and REVOKE INTERNIC.CA on moral grounds!
It used to be that you pretty much had to follow the guidelines with regards to domain registration.
.com = commercial entity
.org = non-commercial organization
.net = part of the network infrastructure.
And you had to be pretty much honest about it (or at least, most people were honest without being forced to).
The problem, I think, is a compound one.
1) The Internic did not enforce these guidelines. People were permitted to register whatever the hell they wanted.
2) The Internic did not verify any contact information or business information. I'm willing to bet that a GREAT number of domain registrations are fraudulent (as in, the information given is false and misleading)
3) The Internic took people's MONEY for this. So.. they can't very well go back and say 'Your domains have been revoked because they are fraudulent registrations' when they accepted your money in the first place!
Also... *NOTE*
REGARDING INTERNIC.CA
Internic.ca, unless someone informs me otherwise, is a SCAM. (or at least, very misleading.)
The way to register CA domains is described at www.cdnnet.ca. You contact one of the regional registrars DIRECTLY by mailing them the appropriate forms. It does *NOT* cost any money. (there are strict guidelines as to what you can and cannot register, and as to how many domains per entity you can have (one)) Every canadian can have their own domain, for free.
INTERNIC.CA makes their page look very official. THey charge a $70CDN non-refundable FEE simply to SEND your registration to the registrar. They have absolutely NO say in whether or not you can ahve that domain. In other words, although they DO state in the fine print that this is all they do for you, they are NOT actually providing you with ANY kind of service WHATSOEVER> The exact same form you send them, you could send directly to a registrar yourself! It has been this way for a decade.. and has not changed to my knowledge.
I really think that the
This reminds me of an earlier post, and the comment that came to mind then...
.com domain name, am I bound to?
.com domain name that happened to be the same as some US companies trademark?
The US gov't is proposing some legislation regarding children's privacy online. Great idea!
Problem: US law only applies in one country last I checked.
Now, were it an issue for me, I'd gladly follow the guidelines, however, because I have a
Who could stop a czech company from owning a
- Make a new domain: .tm.us .us domain, so US law can be applied (.com shouldn't be subject to US trademark law, it was intended for international use)
- Only US trademark holders can register in this domain
- It's part of the