Jimmy Buffett Needs His CheeseburgersInParadise.com
Thursday, June 19th, 2008
UDRP filing goes after domain name CheeseburgerSinparadise.com.
An arbitration request has been filed with National Arbitration Forum over the domain name CheeseburgersInParadise.com. This is similar to “Cheeseburger (singular) in Paradise”, the famous song and brand owned by Jimmy Buffett and his associated companies.
My guess is his restaurant chain, which uses the CheeseburgerInParadise.com domain name, is going after the domain. A screenshot of CheeseburgerSinparadise.com from March 2008 shows the page of a restaurant and grill called Skeeterz, which was probably enough to get Buffet’s trademark lawyers to go after it. According to Compete.com, CheeseburgerInParadise.com gets about 25,000-35,000 visits per month.
U.S. Patent & Trademark registration 2790010 for “Cheeseburger in Paradise” covers goods and services related to “Restaurant, bar and nightclub services”. It was originally filed for by Jimmy Buffett himself but has since been assigned to Margaritaville Enterprises, LLC. Several other trademarks for the term are owned by either Buffett or JB Intellectual Property.
The typo domain name was registered in 2002 and currently points to a GoDaddy parked page featuring ads for Wendys and Yellowbook.com.
Update: Here’s the complaint. It was filed by Margaritaville Enterprises, LLC.
Update: Margaritaville Enterprises won the case
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Tags: cheeseburger in paradise, jimmy buffett, margaritaville
An easy TM infringement call.
I haven’t checked, but wouldn’t be surprised to see the owner pass on even fighting for it.
Jimmy’ll; he’ll have his “cheeseburgers” soon enough.
@ Steve – yeah, I’ll be interested to see the details on this one, especially if it was forwarding to a competing restaurants’ site for a while.
This is the first I’ve heard of this. Thanks for the post, I’ll stay tuned for more.
Rich
Nice try SQUATTER.
There is a chain of Skeeters in Houston
This was NOT a squatting issue (in our opinion, we are not a competing restaurant – not even close. Please take a few minutes to understand what is going on, THEN give me your feedback as there is MUCH MORE to this.
If you are interested in WHAT is really going on…go to http://www.Cheezeburgers.com And please let me know your opinions.
Oops…forgot this!
Our Skeeterz Rum Bar in St. Lucia has no affiliation with Skeeters in Texas. There is nothing confusing and no similarities in any way, all we do is serve burgers, with cheese, in St. Lucia, which is nature’s paradise – and that ends up being Cheeseburgers In Paradise!
http://www.SkeeterzRumBar.com
Thanks!
Steve, thanks for posting. With all due respect, I think you’re toast on this one. Especially if the allegations that you were going to sell the domain on eBay are true.
What are your feelings about this (from ICANN)
1. circumstances indicating that you have registered or you have acquired the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark or to a competitor of that complainant, for valuable consideration in excess of your documented out-of-pocket costs directly related to the domain name.
The emphasis is on:
for valuable consideration in excess of your documented out-of-pocket costs directly related to the domain name
They have to prove three things.
1) Similar to trademark – as 99% of the time, they’ll get this.
2) respondent has no rights or interests – it would be a stretch to convince them of your rights and interests, although you’re making a good effort
3) registered and used in bad faith – they’ll show your plan to auction it on eBay is bad faith. If you really bought it to promote your “cheeseburgers in paradise”, you wouldn’t be selling it. I understand your circumstances have changed, but they’ll point out there’s no way you couldn’t be familiar with the slogan.
Thanks for your time and I love the challenge, but am hesitating to mention a few things as I DO NOT want the legal team to have advanced nnoticed if monitoring the web…BUT, bad faith is hard to prove, i was seeking a simple return of investment to move on. And yes i am familiar with the slogan, but a song is not trademarkable…and, when i registered MT DOMAIN NAME, there was no such thing as the restaurant (start up) called Cheeseburger in Paradise.
Can you trademark a common phrase?
Can you trademark a song title years after publication because you believe their is value in naming a restaurant. If it had so much value as a restaurant name how come I’ve found listings of these so named restaurants closing. Likewise I was told by a CIP manager the Outback is trying to sell the chain to MI.
Checkout Cheeseburger in Paradise in HI, a restaurant by the same name.
Read the case history on-line if you are so inclined.
Steve, most of these panels find ‘bad faith’ very easy to find, and they often contradict each other. I’ve seen a lot of cases that should have gone one way go the other…so we’ll just have to see what happens.
And yes, you definitely shouldn’t reveal anything here…
Update: As expected, Margaritaville Enterprises won this case.
YES, you must be psychic!
I can’t believe you knew how it would turn out before the panel made a decision.
But, stay tuned. It seems there is an issue that “may” cause this to be reavaluated immediately…so, if you already know something about this, please let me know!
Don’t know of anything that would cause it to be re-evaluated, but it wouldn’t be anything under UDRP that I know of.