Graduate Student Defends Right To Own Chicago2016.com 461
An anonymous reader points to a story in the Chicago Tribune about another domain-name battle. Quoting the article: "As Chicago wages its battle to host the 2016 Olympics, it also finds itself scrapping over a valuable piece of cyberspace: the domain name of Chicago2016.com. The bid team along with the U.S. Olympic Committee are trying to wrest that online address from Stephen Frayne Jr., a 29-year-old MBA student. Frayne snagged it back in 2004, about two years before the bid was launched. ... 'We certainly see Chicago2016.com as the logical default domain for our site, and we believe having someone else control it is misleading for people seeking information about Chicago's bid,' said Patrick Sandusky, a spokesman for Chicago 2016, a moniker protected by trademark."
Re:Looks Legit (Score:4, Informative)
According to TFA, "<city> <year>" combos have become a common method of referring to a specific instance of the Olympics. e.g. Syndney 2000 [wikipedia.org], Athens 2004 [wikipedia.org], Beijing 2008 [beijing2008.cn], etc. Such naming has all the trappings of a protected mark.
This fellow registered the domains in 2004. Which was AFTER the practice had become commonplace among Olympic cities.
Re:Disconcerting. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Looks Legit (Score:1, Informative)
Actually, they would have a right. You yourself admitted that the Mc-prefix is a common pattern among McDonald's trademarks. In effect, the "Mc" brand itself is their mark. You have no more right to infringe upon their "Mc" mark than I have a right to create a program called "Microsoft Birdhouse". Both instances would be seen as bad faith and an attempt to hang your agenda off someone else's trademark.
Now if you created a parody site called "mcchocolatecake.com" and testified that you had used the term with the belief that it was so outlandish that McDonald's would never use it AND that any onlooker would see the name as a parody rather than a legitimate name, then you might have a case. But if McDonald's did come out with a McChocolateCake, you might be screwed anyway. It would be up to the ICANN panel to decide.
Re:Looks Legit (Score:5, Informative)
Where is the damage? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Looks Legit (Score:5, Informative)
You think so? Then, my good sir, could you please explain the difference between (TM) and (R) markings [wikipedia.org]?
Let me just nip this in the bud right now. From Wikipedia:
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Disconcerting. (Score:4, Informative)
His company however WAS named nissan looong before the car company. And he got the domain name 1st....
Nissan Computer Corp was incorporated in 1991. Uzi's Nissan's first business in the US was Nissan Foreign Car founded in 1980. Nissan Motors (the car manufacturer) was founded in Japan 1934 and their US subsidiary Nissan Motor Corporation USA was founded in 1959. I don't see any way you can claim that Uzi Nissan was using the name for a company before the Japanese company.
However, the case was ruled in the favour of Nissan Computer: Nissan Motor's trademarks are related to cars and Nissan Computer was found to not infringe those trademarks.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Looks Legit (Score:3, Informative)
This is getting tiresome. Here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald's_legal_cases#Cases_brought_by_McDonald.27s [wikipedia.org]
Satisfied?
Re:how about Mccain? (Score:3, Informative)
They would be forced to change the name in the UK (and possibly elsewhere) as Mccain is an established company selling potato products including frozen fries.
Re:Looks Legit (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Looks Legit (Score:5, Informative)
Didnae stop the bastards suing a Mr. McDonald here in the highlands for running a café. The fat it had been running for generations, long before some Yank upstart that was started by some muppet ho wasn't even called McDonald was neither here nor there to these arses.
They lost :D
Had to pay the man damages.
Sadly they didn't lose enough that they'd have had to rename or anything in the UK. That would have been spectacular!
Re:Looks Legit (Score:1, Informative)
Dunno about the US, but in the UK the relevant term is "passing off". If it was obvious that you weren't McDonald's (maybe your chocolate cake didn't contained any glucose syrup?) you'd be in the clear. If a punter might think that you WERE McDonald's you might be, even if you registered first.
There was some "legal discussion" between Apple (the Beatles' record label) and Apple (purveyor of computer products) around the time that Apple got into the MP3 player market.
Re:Looks Legit (Score:5, Informative)
Back in '96: http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/press/herald_7oct96.html [mcspotlight.org]
"a guy" == Lord Godfrey McDonald (chief of clan McDonald, aka 'McDonald of McDonald')
Re:Looks Legit (Score:4, Informative)
I was intrigued by your assertion so I looked it up, and found this site [dochara.com] which states "It is often erroneously said the Mc indicates Irish origin and Mac Scottish origin. In fact there is no difference at all."
Re:Looks Legit (Score:1, Informative)
I'm sorry your reffering to Irish conventions... Mac is Scotish, Mc is Irish. I know I'm off topic, but I needed to say it.
Sorry, but both Mac and Mc are Scottish *and* Irish.
They come from the same Gaelic root, where "mac" means "son of" (a bit like the "bin" in Bin Laden).
Re:Looks Legit (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, they can be. It depends on the circumstances of the individual case.
The problem here is, each poster is trying to put up a simple, black-and-white rule of 'this is what will happen', and that isn't how trademark works.
Trademark isn't like copyright or patent (as if they weren't unclear enough); it's primary focus isn't to establish a monopoly, but rather to avoid consumer confusion; as such the rights reserved are much narrower.
In day-to-day use, I can throw around anyone's trademark all day long. As long as my uses don't create confusion, it's not illegal.
The largely-unresolved trouble with domain names is, while a given use of a mark in a domain name may not cause confusion, one person using it does interfere with another person being able to use it. Trademark wasn't designed to address that situation (my use of a mark in most contexts doesn't affect your ability to use it, except to the extent I use it in a confusion-causing manner), but trademark holders often expect that they have a protected right to use the mark in such a high-profile context -- and thus they think nobody else should be able to use their mark in that way.
Of course, domain names don't line up well with trademarks. They aren't specific to a particular market, or even to commercial use, in the way that trademarks are. So Apple music and Apple computer can't both have a natural right to the apple.com domain name.
I do think there's generally something shady about grabbing up a bunch of domain names matching a pattern, then using the ones that happen to be significant to active Olympic bids -- but I'm not so sure it's a trademark problem or that there's any legitimate rule in place to suppress that sort of thing.
The Big Red Flags[tm] that make me think the Chicago 2016 organization is talking out its small end:
1) They claim they have a right because it's "natural" that they'd use the domain name.
2) Even though the site clearly says it doesn't belong to Chicago 2016, the organization tries to stretch the definition of "create confusion" to cover the possibility of language-barrier-induced misunderstandings. Give me a break. By that logic, if a foreigner sees an Apple logo on an install CD and thinks it's music, that should show that Apple music's trademark has been infringed.
Re:Once again - two faces. (Score:3, Informative)
As has also been stated here, he did so with a large collection of $CITY_NAME+$DATE combinations. Shotgunning makes him a domain squatter.
Ad farms and link farms related to the topic name on the link are equally legitimate, and universally condemned here.
Actually, there is no evidence that Slashdot judged the evidence (as I show above) - but ample evidence that they decided that, even though this is a hated domain squatter, it is a little guy seemingly under attack by a the big guy... And so long as the little guy isn't a pedophile Slashdot supports the little guy automatically and without regards to any of the actual merits of the case.
Re:MIssing the Point (Score:3, Informative)
This case will almost certainly come to a question of "good faith registration," and the fact that the registrant registered a large number of likely Olympic sites followed by Olympic years
To me all that implies is that he evidently intended to run a site related to those olympics, and like the rest of us has no idea where the olympics will be. That's not bad faith; that's common sense.
The fact that he's used the particular pattern the olympics has favored recently is the ONLY issue. But, frankly I'm not satisfied that city-year as a PATTERN is specific enough to assert trademark over.
After all, Expo uses it too... Zaragoza2008.com, as does the Canadian Ultimate Championships (Calgary2008.com), as does the World Science Fiction Convention (Denver2008.com)...
Jakarta2008.com is being used for some massive religious convention...
Washington2008.com belongs to the Barack Obama campaign.
Plus the innumerable cities that own their own name-year domains that redirect to their page of current events. And nevermind the dogpile of domains used by those pointless advertising directories.
I just don't think the olympics can claim they own a trademark on the pattern here.