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Etoy Update
The status conference was scheduled for 8:30 AM on the Monday after Christmas weekend, and Etoy's lawyer wasn't able to attend. Essentially it was the judge checking in with eToys' lawyers; the next meeting is scheduled for Jan.10, but that will probably also be just a status conference.
Here's the good news. According to Etoy's lawyer, one of eToys' major claims to trademarked ownership of "etoy" has been shot down.
eToys had purchased the trademark "ETOYS" from Etna Toys, a New York importer which had secured the mark for itself in 1990. In this way, the company which hadn't formed a website until 1997 could claim that it owned a trademark older than the art group which had been operating on the web since 1995.
Fortunately for Etoy, the Trademark Office decided that "ETOYS" was too generic to be trademarked, and invalidated it. According to this decision, prefixing "e" to the generic term "toys" is not enough to make it trademarkable. This decision may yet be overturned, but it's looking more promising by the day.
Meanwhile, Wired reports that John Perry Barlow and Douglas Rushkoff have joined the etoy crisis advisory board. Barlow calls this domain name dispute "the battle of Bull Run." He's got a point - NSI has taken a highly unusual action based solely on the bullying of a legal firm and a single clueless judge. If that matters more than the time-tested rules of the internet, we're all in trouble. Barlow says that Jon Postel, who worked so hard to establish those rules, would be in tears.
TBTF points out that eToys' stock has been plummeting since Dec.1 and asks why. Since that story, it has continued to fall. Some think this has something to do with their bullying Etoy; others disagree; there are some good comments in the Take It Offline forum that TBTF started.
Etoy's supporters' website at toywar.com promises "TOYWAR.com 1.0 will leave the etoy.BETA-LABS in a few days" but it's been saying that for weeks.
Finally, Etoy's friends at RTMark have taken it upon themselves to wage a game against eToys. The point is apparently to drive their stock price to zero. To me, this sounds about as fun as Quake over a 1200 baud modem, but maybe I'm just too bourgeois.
visit me at eNSI.com
I suspect etoys has sullied their name too much
l
to be around much longer. So while we may forget
the name of the company, lets not forget the
names of the people. I suspect their bullying tacticts will appear elswhere on the 'net in the future. Here's etoy's pointyhairs:
http://www.etoys.com/html/about_management.shtm
I personally didnt spend any of my money with them. They had the elusive toys I wanted for my kids... so they didnt get $600.00 of my dollars :-) and they never will again.. at least until they publish a PUBLIC apology to etoy and the internet community as a whole admitting that they were trying to steal something that wasn't theirs... In other words... I will probably never spend another dime there and at least 12 of my affulent friends will also not ever spend money there.. Word of mouth can kill a company... and etoys will be one of those victims.
I wouldn't be supprised if I see sites claiming to be Etoys. Etoys will have compition with itself :P
Could someone explain me why this was moderated down as Flamebait????
And I'm guessing their stock nosedived primarily because of the fulfillment problems they had with thier e-commerce site over the holiday, not because of 'Net pressure and badmouthing.
I'm sick and tired of seeing that silly picture of Hemos's head with the stupid comb mustache.
:{)
Sorry.
Pax -- Ob
Firstly this lets etoys stay free, but more importantly, we may just save a whole swoosh (yes, the word swoosh is now a noun!) of other trademark related pains-in-the-rectum!
Chalk up +1 for the Trademark office..
which helps against their current score of
-128476.
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How do you keep an idiot in suspense?
Tell him the next version of Windows will be faster, more reliable, and easier to use!
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I had a quick look at www.NSInc.com, and it seems that they infact exist. There could be some kind of brand confusion going on here, after all they're both interested in money. NSInc is roughly 15 years old.
I also noticed that www.ensi.com is also registered and is a real site.
I wonder if we can get Network Solutions to pull the plug on that pesky www.nsi.com?
If eToys indeed withdraw its complaint against etoy, I'll shut my protest site down. I won't until it's duly confirmed. So go visit it while supply last!
- E-commerce DOES exist. It is not an IBM marketing phrase. Believe this. If in doubt, check out "datamation" or whatever magazine is sitting on your boss' desk right now.
- Patent everything.
- Aquire huge amounts of lawyers and money. Guns are frowned on - use them only internationally.
- Your trademark must consist of an easy to remember name - preferably one in the dictionary. Prefix the word with one of the following letters: "X, e, i". Example: eXtreme Computer Parts, iDunno, eNothing.
- Sue everyone with a related name. Network Solutions will happily shut down all of your competitor's online sites with a court order from
/any/ jurisdiction. If the first one turns you down, go judge shopping. - You IPO'd, right?
- Write a book about how you hit it big in the stock market. The title should try to be "deep" but mean nothing, ie: "Business at the speed of thought".
*cough* See, etoys is just following The Advice... don't blame them. =)It's at http://146.228.204.72:8080/.
It looks like eToys.com is giving up their pointless fight
It's their domain; they have a right to ask $1,000,000 for it. Judging from eToys change in market capitalization, it would have been cheaper for them to pay it.
If our society is going to allow intellectual "property" rights, they have to apply to artists at least as much as to corporate predators.
Check out this article from CNET - there's still something disturbing in the settlement:
Evidently, Etoys received complaints from angry parents who can't get a URI right or tell one site from the other. (ok, that's a cheap shot, but still...) It's wrong that an outside organization could dictate your site's content, just because your domain name might be confused by some parent or child. (reminds me of the whole bambi.com controversy)
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Zero tolerance equals zero intelligence
Are any of the new registrars for .com outside the USA? If so, the sensible course would seem to be to register with a non-US registrar and avoid all the bourbon soaked republican judges. Anyone?
So it does seem like your favorite registrant and mine, Network Solutions, didn't read their own policy.
Then again, from what I'm hearing, eToys.com bought the trademark from another company, so the trademark has actually been around longer than the etoy.com domain name. But, eToys.com didn't OWN that trademark until post-etoy. IANAL and this seems like really sticky territory... can any lawyers clarify what they think NSI should have done in this situation?
When domain names started having intrinsic value, rather than just being pointing to locations, then this kind of kerfuffle became inevitable. NSI, having little power of its own and no stomach (much less cash reserve) for a legal fight, will inevitably cave to the stronger party, and that's not what we need in a name service administrator.
If you'd like an analogue, imagine the US Patent and Trademark Office awarding ownership of any given patent or trademark to the strongest comer. Anyone can see how this would become disastrous.
The above analogue wouldn't happen, of course, because the Patent and Trademark Office is a government agency with the rest of the federal government behind it (note that this age may have changed, now that large corporations are lobbying to have funding slashed to agencies which prosecute them). You just don't fight city hall without a good reason and deep pockets. Fighting an independent NSI, on the other hand, is incredibly trivial.
I suggest that legal ownership of NSI's name service databases be recovered by the NSF or another agency of the US government (or better yet the UN), while the business of selling registrations and administering the databases remains in private hands. The point is that ICANN authorized name service vendors would become service providers rather than posessing goods (domain names) which are valuable in their own right and which they have next to no interest in protecting or ability to protect.
This isn't to say that the government would do a better job, or would be less of a jellyfish than NSI was. However, I'd lay good odds that it would at the very least appear much less powerless. This would be enough, I think, to discourage much petty banditry surrounding the issue of domain names.
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There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
I do agree that the NSI action was stupid. Say, why don't these guys (etoy.com) file a counter suit? That will be interesting, a suit in Europe against etoys.com
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
yes it is, but look at the times - three posts within a minute pointing to the same article.
I think that the outcome of this case will have repurcussions that will affect how independant domain holders battle against corporate fat cats.
If only there were some way to educate the people who will be making these decisions in how things really work here in the internet world. That way fast legal talk will not be able to stand in the way of plain fact.
EToys Relents, Won't Press Suit
penguinicide... when jumping out a window just won't do.
Perhaps eToys just wants Etoy up and running again so all those people who ordered worthless pieces of merchandising plastic will try to return it to Etoy, freeing eToys from worrying about refunds and exchanges.
bugger.net | MunkAndPhyber.com
Finally a decision that is more common sense than bullshit.
___________________________
Mello like the Yello, but without the fizz.
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I just wish I could c:\format Internet
I'm guessing that Etoys won't be pushing so hard to keep this injunction now that the christmas season is over. They got what they wanted, and now they're just going to drag their feet until some judge with a brain invalidates their injunction.
Stuff like this is just total crap and getting more and more out of hand....
What NSI did is an outrage! NSI which is the Internet version of the DMV, other than DMV actually cares more about customer satisfaction has been caving in to larger companies over and over again. The company should have been class actioned sued years ago for their quality of service.
The other issue which nobody talked about here is that Etoy should not be thought of as innocent artists. If you read the American Reporter article http://www.american-reporter.com/1232/1.html
They kept asking for $1,000,000 for the domain. I guess artistic integrity also has a price tag.
From the article:
eToys said it would immediately notify etoy of its decision. Cutler stopped short of saying the lawsuit would be dropped, saying instead the company would not "press" the suit.
"We're moving away from the suit, and that's all I can say at this point," Cutler said.
Don't nessecarily trust your eyes. They did not give word whether or not the suit would be dropped.. and the other article does state that eToys's stock *has* been dropping since the beginning of the month. A simple ploy to give them some good publicity, reduce the amount of hate mail that's been bogging thier system and bring thier stock back up? You decide.
Because no matter what the actual result in this case is, companies might start getting ideas like "hmm I can always start some lame campaign against my competitor to have his domainname set on hold for a while." This could only be the beginning, and it's already bad :(
The top story at wire.com seems to be that Etoys won't be pressing the suit: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,33330,00 .html Isn't it a coincidence that they did this after the Christmas shopping season is over?