Originally posted by: SuperTool
I hope Nissan motors wins
I am sick of typing in nissandriven.com
I bet 99% of people going to Nissan.com go there looking for Nissan cars.
This "computer corporation" is milking Nissan Motor corp brand name for all they can.
Have you actually read his story? I've actually been following it for a few years now. The site owner's name is actually Uzi Nissan, and he started up his business and purchased nissan.com LONG before it was "trendy" for everyone in the world to have a domain name. He registered his own name in good faith, and proceeded to run his business from it. He did't leave it empty and just try to extort money from Nissan motors. He did and does use the name actively. It doubly strengthens his case that he registered his OWN name. It's not like a guy named Jzero registering Honda.com for no reason.
Furthermore, he makes no misrepresentations that if you came looking for Nissan Motors, you've come to the wrong place, and the first words on the homepage tell you say.
They never tried to extort anything from Nissan Motors.
Additionally Nissan implicitly admits that they are wrong!
How?
The IC@NN
Uniform Domain Resolution Protocol was developed SPECIFICALLY to address these kinds of disputes. It was meant as a fast and easy way to take out cybersquatters. To add to this, the UDRP judges have been TRADITIONALLY BIASED TOWARDS BIG BUSINESS. In many cases, even when a registrant has satisfied the conditions necessary to keep a domain (those conditions being 1) that the name is not confusingly similar to a registered trademark, 2) that the registrant has a legit interest in the name, and 3) that the registrant bought the domain in good faith), the board has OVERRIDDEN those criteria and STILL awarded the name to whom they felt had a more legitimate claim.
UDRP is a very inexpensive process (aside from domain transfer costs at the end, I believe it is free), and is also much faster than trying to push a civil lawsuit through appeal after appeal.
So why hasn't Nissan Motors simply filed for a UDRP proceeding? I think it's pretty obvious that they don't think they'll win. While the guy's name is confusingly similar to Nissan Motors, they would never be able to prove before the Board that he has no interest in the name, nor that he registered it in bad faith. Nissan Motors' attorney's obviously believe that even in their most depraved moment of stupidity, no UDRP Board would ever throw the dispute in their favor.
Instead, they choose to try to run a small business out of money, or at the very least take the gamble that a jury of our peers will have enough techno-morons, or even people like SuperTool who are just plain apathetic, would be willing to rule in their favor.
It's pretty much a shoo-in for Nissan Motors in a federal court, where if they brought it before UDRP, they'd be screwed.
Why should you care about this? This is just the next step in the destruction of the Internet. What was once a place of freely shared information becomes less and less free. A place where the spoils of your work were awarded on a first-come first-served basis is turning into a place where big business will just buy up anything you come up with and leave you with nothing.
It's most unfortunate.
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