handy does Cybersquatting & gets a lot of press

[jayron_32]

Under the current climate, if two
companies share a common trademark, the bigger one wins, despite how long the smaller has
had the trademark, or if they are even in competing markets.

This is sadly all too true. About 4 years ago, when Coca Cola started their Polar Bear campaign, there was the problem that there was a small beverage company named Polar Beverages out of Worcestor, Massachusetts. Polar had been producing soda locally for well over 100 years (i.e. almost as long as Coke) and had a pretty good niche market in New England. The problem was that their logo was a Polar Bear. It Had ALWAYS been a Polar Bear. There’s even a giant plastic polar bear overlooking I-290 in Worcestor that has become something of a landmark, and has been there for DECADES.

So where is this going? A few months after coke adopted the polar bear mascot, they sued Polar beverages for copyright infringement for using their Polar Bear mascot, despite the fact that Polar had been using its mascot for decades and decades before Coke came up with theirs. Last I heard the lawsuit was settled out-of-court, and little became of it, but ultimately, Coke was just using their huge size to bully a smaller competitor into relinquishing a trademark that was rightfully theirs. Ultimately, Polar got to keep their trademark, but still had to shell out some cash, esentially to prevent Coke from running them out of business using expensive litigation. Polar knew they were right, but had to concede because it would be too expensive to win in court.

The moral of the story: With regard to the law, right don’t mean shit. All that matters is if you have enough money to beat the other guy into submission.

[Baglady]

*Originally posted by handy *
So, anyone else out there doing any Cybersquatting?

Baglady hands Handy some cyber-toilet paper.

[handy]

Yo Bag, my real name is Cy, so you got it right…

mattk, yeah, the person is crying foul but I think its dumb for them to do that because they have two names already on the web, didn’t use it for 5 years & there are several people in the US with the same name. Ah, the underclass strike back.

[Patty_O_Furniture]

We have a cybersquatting thread over in Great Debates, but rather than ask everybody to take the long walk over there, I’ll copy my post from there:

Apparently there is an old law on the books that has become useful in fighting the squatters. I can’t link y’all to my company’s CWW, so here is the article from 10/25/99:

Bell Atlantic has reached back into the 19th Century for a weapon to fight high-tech piracy on the Internet that is threatening our good name.

This new breed of pirates – sometimes called “cybersquatters” – is plundering the equity we’ve built for our brand – and doing the same to other companies – by registering similar Internet domain names and using them for corrupt purposes.

In just the past year, we’ve found more than 1,000 instances of trademark infringements of this type involving variations of our Bell and Bell Atlantic domain names (for example BelAtlantic.com, BellAtlantics.com, bellgte.com, belltelephone.net).

The cybersquatters include unscrupulous telecom companies attempting to sell products under our name; those who register variations of our name and then attempt to sell them back to us for an exorbitant price; and those who use our name to lure Web users to sites featuring everything from pornography to satanic cults.

“When cybersquatters steal our name and register it as theirs, it just confuses customers who are looking to do business with us,” said Sarah Deutsch, senior intellectual property counsel. “It’s really a consumer fraud issue, and in some cases it’s nothing more than theft or a transparent attempt to extort money from us.”

In an ironic and innovative legal strategy, Bell Atlantic is leading the fight against these modern-day buccaneers using a tactic that merchants in the 1800s used against pirates who plundered their ships.

Called “in rem” – Latin for “against the thing” —the legal maneuver enables us to dispense with suing the individual or company responsible and go after the name itself. Just as 19th-century merchants realized the futility of suing pirates who were unlikely to show up in court, Bell Atlantic realizes that Internet pirates often use false names and addresses and cannot be found. By suing the ship and winning, the merchants were able to have ownership of the ship transferred to them. Today, by suing the domain names, we’re winning in court and having the pirated names handed over to us.

“We’ve been very successful with this,” said Deutsch. She cited a recent court victory in which we sued nearly 100 domain names and were able to get more than two-thirds of them transferred back to us. Deutsch said the in rem approach is a welcome solution because there are considerable legal obstacles that prevent companies from successfully suing cybersquatters, including First Amendment (free speech) issues and how the courts interpret the use of a trademarked name. Unfortunately, with costs as low as $70 to register a domain name and a possible resale value in five figures, the problem keeps growing.

Deutsch noted that there has been an explosion in domain name registrations, growing from several hundred thousand a few years ago to nearly 3 million this year. And now the problem is a global issue, with people able to register domain names in more than 250 country codes.

“We’ve had one instance where someone was doing business in Great Britain under our name without authorization,” Deutsch said. “And in another instance, the crown prince of a country called Tonga took our name and registered it using Tonga’s country code. The crown prince said he was just reserving it for us and agreed to sell it for $1,000.”

Deutsch said that when Bell Atlantic and GTE announced their merger, cybersquatters immediately registered more than 50 variations of the name and then attempted to sell them to us. To strengthen our legal standing against cybersquatters, we’re lobbying Congress for legislation through a coalition of famous brand holders known as the Private Sector Working Group (PSWG). Deutsch serves as co-chairperson for the group, which includes Microsoft, Disney, Porsche, and AT&T among its members.

A bill currently before the House would make it illegal for people with no legitimate claim to a trademarked name to register it as a domain name, or to register a name that is similar in a misleading way. The in rem tactic we’ve used so successfully has been written into the bill, along with provisions for penalties of up to $300,000.

Deutsch said the PSWG has found a sympathetic audience in Congress, not only because of the trademark issues involved. A number of congressional members have been victims of cybersquatters themselves, with people registering Web sites using variations on the member’s name and then holding the name for ransom.

And a follow-up decision by the courts on 2/14/00:

Bell Atlantic won the legal right to take possession of 23 Internet addresses from “cybersquatters” recently in what is believed to be the first court test of recent legislation passed by Congress. The law, known as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, makes it illegal to take trademarked names - and names that sound like those
trademarked names - in bad faith to the detriment of their rightful owners. It allows for damages as high as $100,000 for names taken after the Act was signed into law last November.

A magistrate judge in Virginia issued the ruling verbally. We originally filed suit last fall seeking the transfer or cancellation of 91 names. Most gave them back to us vuntarily after we filed suit; the last 23 never answered our complaint and were found “in default.”

Sarah Deutsch, vice president and chief intellectual property counsel," told The Wall Street Journal that the ruling was "very important for protecting our brand.

In our recent filing with the court to take possession of the illegal domain names, Bell Atlantic used a provision of the law known as “in rem.” It permits companies or trademark owners to sue for possession of the Internet domain name, rather than suing the parties responsible for the illicit use of a trademarked name.

Deutsch said the cybersquatting law was necessary because the worst cybersquatting offenders often provided false addresses, making it difficult or virtually impossible to track them down.

Cybersquatting has been a growing problem for Bell Atlantic and other companies. In 1999 alone, we found more than 1,000 instances of trademark infringements involving variations of our Bell and Bell Atlantic domain names (for example BelAtlantic.com, BellAtlantics.com, Bellgte.com, belltelephone.net). Of the 23 domain names we were given the right to claim last week - at least one was linked to a pornography Web site. None of the former owners of the illegal Internet addresses showed up at last week’s hearing.