Fucking lying bastards of Oakley Inc., how cheaters win the game...

eBay sued Perfumebay (perfumebay)for trademark infringement. It was long expensive legal case and in the end, ebay won.

Having a registered company doesn't automatically give you trademark rights. While trademark law is complex, and there are a lot of grey areas, basically you had to be the first to use the mark, in its particular classification to establish rights. It's not good enough that you were before the other person, you had to be the very first (continued usage).

If this person had the user name first, your friend would have no case. If you friend was the very first person to use this mark, then he should consult an attorney, however, be warned that it's going to very costly to try to stop the person from using the name, and ebay is under no obligation to give your friend the user name - in fact, I doubt they would (That's from personal experience in suing ebay and obtaining a court order against them).

 

What damages are you talking about? The Google ads that showed on the domain for a short period? Even those Oakley ads that were showed there unintentionally only resulted into more profit for them. And they DID approve those ads, otherwise they should take it on with Google, not me. Google will remove those ads if they want to.

 

I believe that is a difrent situation, as the service provided is simular to that of eBay, so they would be an actual competitor for eBay or resell their services without permission.

I did not do that, after months of waiting I just launched some non-profit website on it for fun. Nothing more.

 

Advertisers do not have to approve what sites ads run on the content network. You could have blocked the ads if you wanted to. Any clicks cost Oakley money, and put money in your pocket. The only people who would visit the site and click an Oakley ad would have done so because they thought they were going to an Oakley site when they entered in the URL. Without you squatting on the site, they would have not incurred any expense.

A registered trademark gives them the right to sue for damages and legal fees. Even if actual damages would have been minor, they could have gone after punitive damages, and legal fees (which would have buried you).

Face it, you tried to make a buck off their name. You weren't some fan just out to help them. You were trying to help yourself and the fact you asked for so much money for the domain is what gave them their case.

Stop crying about how you didn't make money off their name. Be original, don't ride the goodwill established by someone else - at least without their permission. Start you own company, your own brand, and then see if you are happy about someone coming along and trying to steal your name for $10. Maybe you would be happy to pay big bucks for the trademark you established... yeah, right.

 

Are you kidding? Oakley has their own website. They have their own retailers. They obviously didn't need or want you.

Non-profit? Running adsense makes it a commercial venture. You only changed the domain usage after you couldn't get permission to use as you had intended and were attempting to hold the name hostage and resell it for a major profit. Asking 25.000 EURO for the domain isn't a non-profit venture, is it?

 

Yes, it all started out as non-profit. Just after a few more months I tried some ads, just to see if it would work out. I mean, the domain costed a lot of money so I tried to get some return from it and not by making profit on the Oakley name which would be illegal I thought. I wanted to provide ads related to the content of the website and it did work, just, 1 out of 4 pageloads included Oakley sunglasses ads so I removed them again.

 

Are you really that stupid? Running advertisements = trying to make a profit

Why you made a thread titled "Fucking lying bastards of Oakley Inc., how cheaters win the game..." is beyond me, especially since Oakley did nothing wrong while you were the lying, cheating bastard.

 

How much did it cost you? Did you register it or bought it from someone else?

 

Yes, of course. They did not own that domain, why should I not be alowed to make profit with it in a legal way?

And the truth is what really matters, not what you or anyone else believes. Oakley knows the truth really well, so it's fine by me. The topic title is meant as an expression, not meant to actually curse.

Also Steve Ballmer uses this as you can see in the folowing news articles:

http://battellemedia.com/archives/001835.php

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4213466.stm

And the video to show how he meant it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc

 

6500 USD and there were costs for market research, webdesign etc. The original askingprice was 15.000 USD however so I got a pretty good deal on it.

 

Any reason you didn't get those other domains?

 

Well, I first wanted permission so I limitted the risk for not getting permission to just Oakley.nl. When I received permission I would also have tried to purchase the other domains to serve the european market when the opportunity proved feasible and we would be able to provide the best possible service.

 

Well, since it was already taken (it's not like it was available so you had to grab it ASAP), you should have waited for permission on that one too.

 

Basically stay away from trademarks.

I can see your argument but unfortunatly you were never going to win this. I have only studied UK law so US and Dutch may vary but it goes something like this (Whether deliberate or not, this is how the courts/law will see it).....

Oakley.nl only had a high value because Oakley has built their brand up. They have invested millions(maybe billions) in their name. If they didn't exist then oakley.nl would be worthless.

You have capitilised on their name and investment to make money for yourself. If oakley.nl did not exist then visitors would have eventually found the .com domain and its a bit harsh to expect every company to buy up every single version of a domain name.

 

I did the whole trademark domain thing once lol i bought nominet.biz (Nominet is a UK Registrar) and i registered the domain via a US Registrar,

Due to the fact i never EVER developed the domain (dont know why i reg'd it tbh) i sold it onto Nominet a few months down the line for $5000usd ... a Sound investment imo.

 

real long story, they sound real bad now...

 

Maybe to the average ignorant user who doesn't seem interested in checking
further, but not to those who'll find out more to try to understand what it's all
about. That's why some companies don't bother replying on online forums as
they know some people will believe whatever they want, but it won't matter
as long as it doesn't considerably affect their commercial success.

If what you said is true, Interactive, then congrats and lucky you.

 

You could have used the competetive ads filter there if you didn't want them showing on your site.

 

Badluck Bro. I'll choose another brand now after I read your story when I buy stuffs.
However its alwasy beter to never buy TM domains. They cause a lot of trouble. Like for me sometimes eventhough
I make _domains for TM domains I just redirect to the original owner just in case. You could never now.