Re: trademark law

[Carl Oppedahl <carl@oppedahl.com>]

At 01:41 PM 12/12/96 -0800, Michael Dillon wrote:

>> carol forgot to mention that there IS caselaw, the most noticable being
>> warner bros vs. roadrunner.com, where the little guy actually won one!
>
>I thought that was settled out of court or withdrawn.

Roadrunner Computer Systems, Inc. (my client) got to keep its domain name,
the first domain name ever to do so in the face of receiving an NSI 30-day
letter.  That means it won.  NSI, which wanted to cut off the domain name,
didn't get to do so.  That means NSI lost.

Since then, several other domain name owners who received 30-day letters
from NSI have also won.  NSI has never won in a case in which it has been
sued by a domain name owner -- it has always had to back down and agree not
to carry out its policy.

However, RCS's "winning" came at a price -- a profound threat against the
livelihood of the company, and great legal expense.

It is a continued offense against the Internet community that NSI cuts off
domain names in cases where domain name owners are not infringing anybody's
trademarks.  Most of the "little guys" who aren't infringing any trademarks
but are on the receiving end of an NSI 30-day letter don't have enough money
to go to court, and they don't win.  They get put out of business by NSI.