I got a threat to get sued for cybersquatting. how bad is it?

That type of usage would get more complicated and would depend on how famous the name was and/or the usage of the existing trademark - i.e. Bill Gates Consulting. I have a friend from a famous family of wine makers in the Napa Valley that uses it's last name as its trademark. This person started his own winery and tried to incorporate his real last name into the winery (a family trademark) and was taken to court and lost and was forced to use another name.

Madonna (the singer) sued the owner of Madonna.com for trademark infringement. Normally, the singer wouldn't have claim to "Madonna" but because the former owner used the domain in a way to profit off her, he wound up losing the valuable domain (the singer now owns it) and lost over a million in legal costs. The law basically says you can't profit off the goodwill established by someone else. There are specific trademarks and broad trademarks that cover almost every possible use (i.e. IBM).

 

Yeah, just give it to them. Not worth getting into trouble with that.

 

Have not got time to read the whole thread. What is cybersquatting?

 

Cybersquatting is basically registering tonnes of domain names without the rights to own them (trademark, copyright issues etc.) and not releasing the domain's authority to the original TM owner, thats what I think

IT

 

Ahhhh. I see. Thanks for that my great friend!

 

And what are you prepared to do should the OP be sued by Mattel and hold you
accountable for that?

Don't make stupid comments without checking further.

 

This statement shows real ignorance of the U.S. legal system.

YES, they can sue him. Anyone can sue anyone for anything.

Hell, I can sue you because I think your post is horribly annoying and caused me emotional distress.

Now, would I win if I sued you for something like that? Of course not.

But you'd have to hire an attorney to get my frivilous lawsuit dismissed, and a motion for summary judgment does not come cheap.

Does Mattel have a case against him? Maybe, maybe not. I'm not a lawyer, and if I was one I wouldn't evaluate cases over internet message boards, so I can't comment one way or the other.

But can Mattel sue him, even if they have absolutely no case, and force him to spend thousands of dollars defending himself against their frivilous lawsuit? Yes.

So, the question is: does he have thousands of dollars to defend himself against a lawsuit (or have the ability to secure pro bono representation)? If the answer is no, well, then your advice doesn't really do him any good, does it?

P.S. If you really think that doing a whois search "violates privacy" you really have no business dispensing legal advice to others. Just because you think something is "not fair" does not mean it's illegal.

 

I would find someone with the name barbie and have them vouch as the owner of the domain and say that you are just holding it for him/her.

 

give them the name for $100

 

I AM NOT A LAWYER SO THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE.

Mike Rowe would have won that case if microsoft wouldn't decided to back off.

And yes, you can use domain name that contains existing trademark, the main question is: can your domain name be confused to existing trademark.

And never, ever, ever ask how much someone will pay for a domain or offer to sell it if they say you are infringing their trademark, that is a proof of cybersquatting effort and will get you into trouble.

The best advice for the guy with Mattel-like domain is to contact lawyer if he really wants to fight mattel, if he doesn't then he should act very nice towards them and agree to their demands - they probably don't sue after that, the letter is just typical cease and desist.

Also if you want to do some research yourself, this is one of the best pages but I can't stress this enough: if you want really to fight mattel, you have to hire a lawyer

http://www.chillingeffects.org/domain/

http://www.chillingeffects.org/input.cgi

 

I think your personal moral judgement are biasing your position. Which is cool and dandy.. after all, our biases are how we interpret things. However, although some can call this behavior "deplorable," in the United States, things are a question of legality, not of morality.

 

Umm, Mike Rowe wanted to fight to the case. He also had a lot of people who donated money for a legal fund - the expert legal advice he received was that he clearly would have lost - and he would have. Phonetic spelling have long been held by the courts to be trademark infringement. Microsoft didn't care about any lost revenue from that domain - they are REQUIRED by law to take action to protect their mark or risk losing it.

If you notice, I said you cannot use a trademark that conflicts with an existing usage. There are forty some classifications and each has different usage rights - however, there are trademarks that are so unique or have such broad protection, any use is likely to be infringement.

 

Which is exactly why I included a link to show that it is illegal...

 

You should have made a parody website about barbie and mattel out of it. You would be covered under the fair use act.

 

Last time i checked barbie was just a name.... unless you use it in context with a barbie doll specifically.

Put another shrimp on the barbie....

im going to try and trademark Mike...or Bill and then go sue people.

 

Do you have the money to sue everyone for that?

 

So what about sites that are like viagraworks.com or viagracheap.com I dunno if those are real sites but would that be considered cyubersquatting?

 

Not necessarily. While there's no legal definition, the link below can give you a
pretty good idea how it works:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting