One thing that made this case unique is when the domain name's parking page started showing ads of competing services to MySpace's trademark. This is 1 exception to the belief that a domain name registered before a trademark was established is "safe" against infringement claims. Let's say you registered bcdedotcom and had it parked. Six months later, one guy starts using the letters bcde to sell bowling balls. A year later, the guy files an application with uspto.gov for bcde bowling balls. A year or 2 after, the application gets approved and granted trademark status itself. Two months later, bcde.com's parking page shows ads to competing products. The bcde mark holder sees this, documents whatever he can, then sends out a C&D to the bcdedotcom registrant. Domain names per se don't necessarily infringe trademarks. Rather, it can be a combination of facts like use, intent, any communications to sell the domain, domain bearing trademark, etc. that can be used for an infringement claim. The link previously posted gave a few reasons why the decision wasn't upheld in favor of the complainant, one of them being it's difficult to determine when the parking pages exactly changed.
So to sum up, myspace.co.uk had myspace competing ads on its page. It was penalized. other parking pages who also has myspace competing ads on its page was not. the different? myspace.co.uk has trademark myspace on its name. true?
Listen, If a company has a TRADEMARK on a name and you are INFRINGING on that trademark then they have every right to protect their name.
Correct Correct Correct, 3/3 The problem in this case is that PRIOR to myspace being a 'success' , this domain actually did something else for the owner. As soon as the owner saw it was more profitable to park it, and sell ads there, competing against myspace, they did so. The owner, then owning a 'myspace' domain, profited off of someone else's work and patents, deliberately, while owning part of said 'patent' (ie: the domain name). Like I said, this is one of those cases that will never just 'go away'. We'll be hearing appeals for this for years down the road.