Comments on: Is Godaddy a Mass Cybersquatter?

By: Louise

Louise — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:29:11 +0000

Hi, Funny, no mention of the CNN article about the lady who created website, myhusbandneedsajob, and posted a link that led to a godaddy page: http://domainnamewire.com/2009/03/14/godaddy-makes-it-harder-for-womans-husband-to-find-a-job/

since corrected. The article came out about the same time as your blog post.

When it comes to legal, go daddy isn’t accountable. When it comes to the court of public opinion, that’s a different story!

Louise “I won my small claims against Go Daddy” Timmons
http://www.lasuperiorcourt.org/civilCaseSummary/index.asp?CaseType=SmallClaims
Case Number: 09S00328
Filing Court: Long Beach Courthouse

By: I Told You So, GoDaddy! « The Legal Satyricon

I Told You So, GoDaddy! « The Legal Satyricon — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:03:58 +0000

[...] about how one of my theoretical posts has now come to life. Prof. Marc Randazza had a great post Is GoDaddy a Mass Cybersquatter? on his Legal Satyricon and, while it’s great fun to muse about these things hypothetically, I [...]

By: Go Daddy Extortion | BlogWell

Go Daddy Extortion | BlogWell — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:22:11 +0000

[...] Prof. Marc Randazza: Is Godaddy a Mass Cybersqatter? Sphere: Related Content Add to Delicious Digg This! · Stumble This! · Mixx This! · [...]

By: The UDRP in Narnia « The Legal Satyricon

The UDRP in Narnia « The Legal Satyricon — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 23:44:17 +0000

[...] the domain name in dispute is parked at a pay-per-click site (if you don’t know what that is, click here for an explanation). Someone is making click-through fees on that page’s sponsored links, but Seville-Smith [...]

By: Cybersquatting comes to Narnia « The Legal Satyricon

Cybersquatting comes to Narnia « The Legal Satyricon — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:47:55 +0000

[...] domain name is parked at a pay-per-click site (if you don’t know what that is, click here for an explanation). This is bad faith use, even if the page is automatically [...]

By: Domain History Blocking Comes to Domain Tools « The Legal Satyricon

Domain History Blocking Comes to Domain Tools « The Legal Satyricon — Sat, 24 May 2008 11:52:08 +0000

[...] turns un-used domains into pay-per-click sites. I’m not a big fan of them, as is obvious from this prior post. In theory, they are fine – they turn unused web domains into money-making enterprises. [...]

By: David

David — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 13:23:26 +0000

On the side, Network Solutions is on the news (again) for doing practically the same thing blogged here:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080410-keeping-network-solutions-from-cashing-in-on-your-subdomains.html

AFAIR, Dotster’s been doing this for a long time as well.

By: Bonkers

Bonkers — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:51:43 +0000

You can add this to my last post.

Duncan v. Royal Tops, 343 F.2d 655 (7th Cir. 1965) does not stand for the proposition that “when a phrase or word is common [E]nglish, NO trademark protection is allowed.”

If people said, Did you buy an apple today? (refering to a computer) common term used everywhere then Apple TM would be Void. That was my point. People refer to them as PC’s. If not why not? Otherwise YoYo would still be a TM, correct?

By: Bonkers

Bonkers — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:26:09 +0000

Lets look at Flamigo.com UDRP/Trademark case.

There are 44 Classes of TM’s in US? (i think i am close)

Flamingo.com was lost, Even though in Florida there are at least 3 hotels with the same name, all were in business before Flamingo hotel in Vegas, you can check it for yourself. The one place I stopped at in Florida said the hotel has been in business since the 30’s. WAY BEFORE Vegas.

The case of SUPERIOR rights is what the real problem is. If you are a big company (railroader) and hire a lawyer (Pinkerton) you will get the domain except in all but extreme cases.

(not the typo’s or scrable.com dellBUSINESSTERM.com) Actually it is crazy that they have to pay UDRP anything to recover those, that is another story.

The current UDRP is like Pinkerton’s who worked for the railroad in 100+ years ago.

The Flamingo hotel in Vegas does NOT own all classes of TM’s so why should they have the domain? Even if Gambling links showed up what does it matter?

Common words like that an many others shouldn’t be UDRP cases.

Also, Didn’t apple have to pay off someone ($250 million+ I believe, correct me if I am wrong) over the logo? Dealing with the Beatles record company? Bad example on your part but ok.

SIDENOTE:
Are you saying that the company Apple should own ALL TLD’s that are APPLE.whatever? Apple.ca, Apple.ws? Apple.mobi (stupid TLD) etc?

By: marcorandazza

marcorandazza — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:07:13 +0000

Wow… I am really happy that you posted here, because you are operating under some real misinformation with respect to trademark law.

First of all, trademark rights are granted through *use* not through *registration.*

You don’t need a registration to have a trademark. You can fail to renew your trademark registration, and still retain common law rights to the mark. You only lose your trademark rights if you abandon your *use* of the mark. Get it?

With respect to the Duncan Yo-Yo case, you’ve again obviously gotten a little knowledge of trademark law by talking to angry domainers, but not in a trademark law class. Duncan v. Royal Tops, 343 F.2d 655 (7th Cir. 1965) does not stand for the proposition that “when a phrase or word is common [E]nglish, NO trademark protection is allowed.”

Duncan stands for the proposition that previously valid trademarks can lose their status as trademarks through the process of genericide. Asprin and escalator are other examples of trademarks that became generic terms for the products they represent.

This does NOT mean that a common English word, like APPLE can not be used as a trademark — in fact , it is a registered trademark. Not for “apples,” naturally, but for computers.

Google, as you point out, is used as a verb. However, only someone with no knowledge of trademark law would say that it has suffered genericide. I don’t say this to insult you — but rather to insult the idiot who told you this. I presume that it was some idiot on a domainer chat board. If it was an attorney, you should NEVER hire him, because he will screw up your case for sure. If it wasn’t an attorney, you shouldn’t have listened to him in the first place.

Now to the point… if you say “I googled it” do you mean “I searched for it on the internet?” Or do you mean “I searched for it on the Google search engine?” If I told someone to “Google it,” and they used “Ask Geeves,” I would not think that they had followed my instructions.

So, to conclude: Whoever taught you trademark law is either uninformed, an idiot, or both. Alternatively, they are one of these attorneys that preys on people like you — trying to get you whipped up into a frenzy so that you waste your money defending hopeless cases.

If you want to learn anything else about trademarks, feel free to ask. Just please stop using whatever source you’ve been using — because they have been lying to you.

By: Bonkers

Bonkers — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:41:48 +0000

If you are going to say that DomainNames are trademarks, and should be protected. Then if a TM holder DOES NOT PAY for the renewal of the domain he should lose all rights to the Trademark. Just like the USPTO.gov trademark office. If you don’t pay the fee you lose your TM.

Or do trademark holders want all the benefits and none of the responsibilities? TM holders love to make it someone else’s problem rather than take care and pay there bills.

Also review the Duncan YoYo case, when a phrase or word is common english NO trademark protection is allowed. Those if you brought up how common phrases are not trademark protected then TM lawyers couldn’t charge stupid fee’s

Google is a common term and SHOULD not have TM status, unlike kleenex, Scrabble or Xerox all which had to spend millions to save there TM status.

Did you google him? It is a verb now, no longer. Used in movies, tv shows etc. You do NOT see that with Scrabble, if a newspaper uses the mark Scrabble you will see they always use the R symbol.

By: Auto-generated websites equal bad faith under the UDRP « The Legal Satyricon

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 10:36:28 +0000

[...] websites equal bad faith under the UDRP Two weeks ago, in Is Godaddy a Mass Cybersquatter?, I discussed pay-per-click sites: The ubiquitous “sponsored links” pages that have [...]

By: David

David — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 14:13:42 +0000

The ACPA provides immunity to domain name registrars (such as GoDaddy).

Under few specific conditions, though. As Marc later mentioned, Dotster itself was sued by Neiman Marcus which they eventually settled. Now this is mainly "insider talk" that's not (yet) officially confirmed, but Dotster was supposedly used by its owners precisely to monetize trademark-domain namesakes via domain tasting. Neiman Marcus happened to document them, and was even prepared to demonstrate Dotster itself "owned" those domain names themselves.

By: Venkat

Venkat — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:07:58 +0000

Interesting, so as far as GoDaddy goes this only occurs with GoDaddy’s customers? (That would make sense, I can’t see how they have the ability to mess with a behind the scenes redirect for domain names registered through other registrars.)

On a loosely related side note, I’m struck at how many legal blogs have their names typosquatted (e.g., howappealing.com, http://professorbainbridge.typepad.com/ (who incidentally, has a mark)).

By: marcorandazza

marcorandazza — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 20:39:56 +0000

Brian,

Lets not lose focus here… The cases that you cite are not exactly on point.

First off, I don’t think that the registrar’s behavior fits squarely under the ACPA. Nevertheless, the cases you cite simply say that registrars are not liable when their *customers* commit acts of infringement.

In this circumstance, it is the registrar itself that is, arguably, *using* the domain name to its own advantage. This is more akin to the Dotster case than the Lockheed Martin or Bird cases.

And… although I did not analyze this behavior under simple trademark infringement theories, it very well might fit as a simple Lanham Act violation — depending on the text of the registration agreement.