Some of us remember the issues with mtv.com (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV#Internet).
France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
121–130 of 232 posts
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#122Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#123So 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?
[deleted]
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They don't do that after the fact. They have and do. https://voiceofpeopletoday.com/kim-jong-un-orders-change-num... It's unusual for the French government, who has some of the strongest consumer protections on the planet.
Wait, your argument is that Kim Jong Un seized telephone numbers, so of course France can seize a domain name from an American citizen 24 years after the fact?
> Wait, your argument is that Kim Jong Un
I'm not making an argument. I'm stating a fact, because the gp stated an incorrect fact (a generalization about governments). You can take a look at a number of other world countries that have changed phone numbers for various reasons, amounting the to same thing. A trivial refutation of
> They don't do that* after the fact.
* = change the ownership of phone numbers/domains
Things happen slowly in the EU. That's not a surprise to those who live in it.
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except he wasn’t a cyber squatter — he built a business around it. It’s seems uncommon for countries to actually own COUNTRY.com - UnitedStates.com, America.com, Germany.com and many more are privately held.
germany.com isn't in the same class as the other examples; France's claim on france.com is arguably more similar to Germany's hypothetical claim on deutschland.com . Why assume that what governments really care about is the English name for their country?
Germany doesn’t care about deutschland.com either.
So, unclear what your point is.
Mine, is that countries generally don’t seem to care about the .com (of any variation) of the country name.
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#126So 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?
If country names cannot be trademarked, that makes the french government's case even weaker, according to WIPO rules - the international body tasked with untangling domain name disputes that fall outside national jurisdiction, like the .com hierarchy.
Using a domain name in bad faith against an established trademark are both necessary conditions to seize a domain name. If the term is generic, it cannot be trademarked. There is also beyond dispute that it was used in good faith.
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
.com has become the de-facto default TLD for the net for better or worse.
somewhat disagree, hipster companies use .io for example
doing as hipsters do, specifically avoiding the norm/default.
a perfect example of the exception proving the rule, i think
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps so. But how would you have the issue resolved? Should the domain go to the most well known party? The product a reasonable person expects to find when they type in the address? What happens if I register icar.com for product that syncs your car to the cloud. Then Apple decides they want to compete with Elon Musk, with their new Icar. Who will get the domain? What happens when a large company decides to rebran…
Going by iPad.com as an example, you'd play a game of chicken with Apple, because the moment you try to monetize that site in almost any way, they'll sue you for trademark infringement. You'll hope they offer you a ton of money for it, but Apple's brand is strong enough that they don't need it. Mr. Nissan is lucky that he had an existing business that wasn't car related and he only registered his name...
Mr. Nissan is lucky indeed.
One of the reasons I used Apple is because it is easy to point to some examples of them acting in bad faith. Iphone and the music side both had legal niceties surrounding them, from all the parties involved.
If if was a small company or a single person in either of these cases, it would generally be a steam roll. Perhaps ipad.com is a squatter but I would want to make very sure before I give the rights to Apple.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_iPhone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
It certainly could be a trademark, just not an exclusive one like Coca-Cola. If you wanted to market a "France" brand of chairs in the US, that'd be allowed most likely, but wouldn't prevent a "France" brand of dish towels from being registered by someone else. You'd still need to avoid a false impression of origin for your chairs, but it could work if they're actually from France, you provide an alternate associatio…
FTA: > Defendants knew that they did not, and do not, have a right to the word "France," as evidenced by Defendant Atout France's US Trademark Registration No. 4027580, filed in 2009, in which Defendant expressly disclaimed the exclusive right to the word "France."
Yup, agreed. Exclusive being the key word there. They were using the word France as a reference to the country, and couldn't prevent others from doing so. That's different from using the word to reference something else like chairs.
Re: France seizes france.com from man who's had it since 1994
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
It certainly could be a trademark, just not an exclusive one like Coca-Cola. If you wanted to market a "France" brand of chairs in the US, that'd be allowed most likely, but wouldn't prevent a "France" brand of dish towels from being registered by someone else. You'd still need to avoid a false impression of origin for your chairs, but it could work if they're actually from France, you provide an alternate associatio…
Coca Cola probably doesn't have a trademark for chairs, so this is a bit of an odd example. If you tried to trademark Coca Cola chairs, Coca Cola would sue you based on confusion, not because they already have a trademark in the category of household furniture.
Right - their trademark effectively means "from The Coca-Cola Company" as it's intrinsic meaning. As you say, anything called Coca-Cola would create confusion if not actually from them, since people would assume it was theirs. So they effectively have exclusive rights to such trademarks.
Whereas for a country name like France, people assume much less about the purveyor of a good simply based on that kind of a reference in its name.