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The guy is a cheap scamer, but a sue could be difficult.
Generic marks are common words that describe the product itself and can not be protected by trademark laws. For example, the words Cheese and Noodles could not be protected by trademark if used on a food product consisting of cheese and macaroni.Complete article at xxxhttp://www.trademark.iastate.edu/basics/
I also think you would lose if you tried to sue, particularly if the .co.uk, for example, was bought by a UK citizen.
A certain online bingo site (not one accredited by CAP, I hasten to add) with a very generic name threatened to sue me for using the same two words in a domain I had that promoted BingoHall.com.
They accused me of passing off, trademark infringement and all sorts of things. I got registered letters from their lawyers in Canada and all that. So I called them, told them that they had no case, pointed out their trademark didn’t cover the UK and asked them very politely to desist from threatening me otherwise I would be the one sueing.
That was the last I ever heard from them.
a “krat Heineken” on its way to the boonies
Dominique wrote:I will sue, even if there is no guarantee for winning. So I either lose or set a precedent.psssst; the internet wasnt created yesterday and it certainly doesnt revolve around you. There are literally thousands of precedents already set; all you would be doing is wasting your time and your money and for what? Because some other idiot register a couple of crap domains that are similar to yours?
I suggest you research ICANN and WIPO cases of the last 10 years.
Lol, that is all good and fine, but I have always been like a dog with a bone when something strikes me as unfair, whether it be to me or others.
Most of the time everyone tells me I can’t win. Never stopped me yet.
I can win the fight even if I don’t win the case – and the pleasure of making that crook pay and pay and pay for his defense constitutes a win, and a precedent. These domains will cost the buyer way more than $6000.
I will sue locally in whatever country.
I do not and will not allow people to walk all over me.
:whipper”
I can’t wait for these domains to surface someplace.
Elgoog, I prefer a krat of Amstel, please. :colgate:
The point is that unless it´s a US citizen he will probably ignore you entirely and you will have wasted money on your lawyer.
I am not an American myself, I am an EU citizen and will be happy to use local laws and lawyers, American or otherwise.
That said, the owner of .co.uk is a CAP member and has PMed me.
I appreciate the honesty and courage and will settle things re. .co.uk privately. :hattip:
.eu appears to be owned seperately, the concurrent appearance seems to be coincidental.
.eu domains are easily dealt with for me. I should have no problem dealing with that at all. Someone is wasting a lot of money if they buy that.
Now they have my undivided attention.
I’m not sure you have any case really. Firstly, is Games and Casino a legally registered trademark in the US? Is it also registered in the UK?
If it isn’t, I don’t see how you can claim anything – just because you have Games and Casino in the US shouldn’t preclude someone creating a company/domain of that name in the UK, doubly so given how generic it is.
It’s highly likely that this domain was created in bad faith, but what if it hadn’t have been? What if this UK guy just had the same idea for a site as you did? Surely you wouldn’t expect to have a right to the domain then.
In fact, imagine it the other way around. Imagine there was a UK company, established 1996, called Games and Casino, and they suddenly discovered the web and were going to sue you! I think then you would be glad that a company in one country can’t just grab the domains of other countries.
I realise of course that in this case there is bad faith, and he is almost certainly just trying to trade off your name. But that really doesn’t matter. Unless you have that trademark registered in the UK, you have no right to the domain name at all.
As for incurring him costs, that’s just not going to happen. Unless he’s a complete idiot he’ll just ignore your lawyers. His costs will be £0 and yours will be $000s, and he’ll just keep ignoring you. Chances are you’ll give up before he does, and even if you don’t, what has he got to lose? He paid £10 for the domain, and the worst that is at all likely to happen is that you’d be granted the domain (but that wouldnt happen, as above). You’re certainly not going to get costs. No court is going to issue damages worth thousands or tens of thousands in damages against some small time chancer with no previous court history.
I think you’re letting your anger cloud your judgement on this one. You should have registered the domain in the first place, and at this point you have vastly more to lose than you do to gain. In all probability he’ll fail to sell the domain at anything like that price, and perhaps you can even grab it yourself for a reasonable price.
LOL, well he didn’t last long.
Same applies for .eu tho. The .eu system even had a grace period for trademark holders to register their domains before the masses got in. You don’t have the trademark, you didn’t register it, and you really don’t have a case.
Lol, the .co.uk is settled, I don’t think there was ill intent, just a lack of thinking things through.
I’ll be buying this person a beer at the next conference. No ill feelings at all.
RE.eu, I have lots and lots of options there. I am not even concerend with trademark there.
I have to run catch a plane, but will be back tomorrow.
Well, it’s your money
I don’t know why most folks here are saying “no case.” First of all, if you are not an attorney then you can’t say that for sure and secondly, what message are you sending? It almost seems like the lot of you are saying “ahhh forget about it, let them get away with this.” What?? If this happened to you I don’t think you’d be so quick to dismiss this.
But anyway, I’m glad one domain is being resolved.
howardmoon wrote:In fact, imagine it the other way around. Imagine there was a UK company, established 1996, called Games and Casino, and they suddenly discovered the web and were going to sue you! I think then you would be glad that a company in one country can’t just grab the domains of other countries.They call it due diligence.
There isn’t one because I checked english speaking countries.
Actually I have been sued for a trademark violation myself (not in this industry and not knowingly, it was actually a keyword picked from word tracker) to the tune of a million $ and I did do a lot of homework then.
Hey, it happens to all of us. Pretty hard to sue anybody for a generic name like gamesandcasino. I’ve seen people registering various extensions for casinogeek, as well as play on the name casinogeeks.whatever, and I know it’s not worth persuing. Heck, it isn’t even worth getting upset about. Seriously.
Take it as a compliment and be glad you’ve become so successful enough for this crap to happen.
Microsoft went after windowscasino.com for trademark infringement on ‘windows’, and they lost.
If they can’t win that battle, I doubt it’s worth paying a lawyer for gamesandcasino. Besides, your lawyer may say yes just to bill you some hours. Been done before.
Dominique wrote:They call it due diligence.There isn’t one because I checked english speaking countries.
Actually I have been sued for a trademark violation myself (not in this industry and not knowingly, it was actually keyword picked from word tracker) to the tune of a million $ and I did do a lot of homework then.
Fair enough, but the point still stands. If you haven’t registered your trademark in the UK, you can’t claim that gamesandcasino.co.uk is rightfully yours. Ditto gamesandcasino.eu – no EU-registered trademark, no case.
It might be different if your name was unique and unlikely to be duplicated accidentally, but I don’t see how you can claim the rights to the generic name Games and Casino in every English-speaking country in the world, unless you register in each of those countries.
Obviously you know more about it than me given your background so perhaps I’m missing something, but the above seems common-sense to me.
As an example, sex.eu was granted to to Yellow Register On Line because they were the first company with a trademark containgin the word ‘sex’ to register it in the EU. I don’t see sex.com trying to sue them, nor sex.co.uk or sex.de or anyone else for that matter.
It’s highly likely that the owner of gamesandcasino.eu doesn’t have a trademark containing those words, but if you don’t either, it’s first come, first served.
