David versus Goliath?
Posted on 06 December 2006, at 9:49 pm, by Judie Lipsett
Here’s an interesting question for you to ponder…
If you create a website using an untrademarked name, and the name is later trademarked by another company, can you be forced to give up your site?
Read Vincent Nguyen’s story, and see what you think.
Here is an update and a little bit more clarification for those that are interested.
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Gear Diary » Archive » Speak of the Devil… Says:
December 7th, 2006 at 1:16 pm[...] I just posted about Vincent Nguyen last night, only to find that he is featured in both a Wall Street Journal video and article today…for a different reason than his looming troubles with Motorola. [...]
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Update: Motorola resorts to reverse domain hijacking of motorazr.com - vincent nguyen Says:
December 7th, 2006 at 5:29 pm[...] It seems like bad news spreads fastest of all; Motorola’s heavy-handed tactics have obviously struck a nerve, with plenty of critical comments both here and on other sites reporting our case. [...]
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December 7th, 2006 at 1:47 am
Interesting story, and while I agree he registered the domain name first, he was asking for trouble considering he did it AFTER the RAZR was released.
December 7th, 2006 at 2:28 am
That’s true. Maybe he has a leg to stand on, but I’m not certain of trademark law in terms of whether its protections are retroactive. I mean, Moto WAS awarded the trademark, afterall.
But he also has something to protect. However, if Moto is indeed awarded the rights to the URL, no one would want this to become an example that allows things to get out of hand where companies can take a website name, trademark it, and rip the URL right out from under the feet of the “Davids”, so to speak, anytime they choose.
So one question could be, “Whether they currently are or aren’t, should trademark protections be retroactive, or should people or businesses that register domain names automatically be extended some sort of trademark rights and protection to the URL (providing it hasn’t been previously trademarked by someone else)?”