France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
arstechnica.com
France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
1–10 of 232 posts
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#2So the case came down to violating French trademark law. That's because country names cannot be trademarked internationally ( and why tourist agencies register names like Visit )
So it's not clear why Web.com even responded to the complaint unless they have a presence in France. Or was the risk that it could have been escalated to a European level of penalty?
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#3Web.com transfers the france.com they registered for their customer (since 1994) to the government of France without explanation or warning.
"on March 12, 2018, Web.com abruptly transferred ownership of the domain to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The company did so without any formal notification to Frydman and no compensation."
It is actually just another example proving the warning we have all known/given for years about SaaS / cloud providers owning your digital properties.
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#4https://www.icann.org/resources/country-territory-names
I have read the entire judgement and beside the fact you can not register the name of a country, he had not also the right to register a trademark from the beginning.
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#5Tangential to the core issue, but seems kinda weird to me that he claims he bought it from web.com in 1994 and he’s had the domain for 24 years when web.com has only existed for 19. A quick Wikipedia search would’ve clearly shown this. Further, in 1994, there’s only one place he could’ve registered this domain as it wasn’t decentralized until the late 90s.
I guess Ars was sleeping at the wheel when posting this.
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#6I think he will win according to US law. At least there's no bad faith, simply a site about "France"
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#7The courts, in the USA, have found that domain names are not property, instead they are like telephone numbers:
----------------
The court found that under the California tariffs, rules, and regulations applicable to public utilities, and under the terms of the contracts, the debtors had no “proprietary right in the number.”
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0a84b472-c89f...
Also:
...under Virginia law, the user of a telephone number or domain name does not have a property interest in that phone number or domain name.
-------------------
Governments have the right to assign to themselves any telephone number they wish, and reserve ranges of phone numbers for themselves, therefore it makes sense that they can do the same to domain names.
If people felt strongly about this issue, the law could be changed, but as of right now, under current law, this does not appear to be theft.
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#8My memory is hazy now but I recall in the mid-90s Gap (the clothing company) suing Genesis Access Point (an ISP) over gap.com and winning. First come first served is the only fair way to run domain names.
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#9Tangential to the core issue, but seems kinda weird to me that he claims he bought it from web.com in 1994 and he’s had the domain for 24 years when web.com has only existed for 19. A quick Wikipedia search would’ve clearly shown this. Further, in 1994, there’s only one place he could’ve registered this domain as it wasn’t decentralized until the late 90s. I guess Ars was sleeping at the wheel when posting this.
Network Solutions was started in 1994, and was later bought by Web.com. It is correct to say that he got a domain name from a registrar which is now the property of Web.com.
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#10Tangential to the core issue, but seems kinda weird to me that he claims he bought it from web.com in 1994 and he’s had the domain for 24 years when web.com has only existed for 19. A quick Wikipedia search would’ve clearly shown this. Further, in 1994, there’s only one place he could’ve registered this domain as it wasn’t decentralized until the late 90s. I guess Ars was sleeping at the wheel when posting this.
You can see some historical domain data using SecurityTrails:
https://securitytrails.com/domain/France.com/whois
Showing Network Solutions for a long time then switched to OVH in March.