Another facepalm moment for law firm Stobbs IP.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is representing the registrant of the domain name collusion.so after he received a threat letter from U.K. clothing company Asos.
The registrant bought the domain name after Rudy Guliani tweeted “#REALNEWS: Woodward says no evidence of collusion.So does Manafort’s team.”
Because Guliani omitted a space, twitter viewed collusion.so as a domain name and linked to it. .So is the country code for Somalia.
The domain registrant forwarded the domain to a site about possible collusion between the Trump team and Russia.
Asos launched a clothing line called Collusion late last year. Apparently, it thinks it now owns the word. It sent a cease & desist letter claiming that the owner of Collusion.so is cybersquatting.
I see lots of cease & desist letters fired off based on automated triggers without much human thought. This appears to be one of those. (At least I hope that’s the case.)
Asos is represented by Stobbs IP, a UK law firm that has the dubious honor of being on the wrong end of two reverse domain name hijacking decisions in a single day.
Mike says
I was reading some new changes to Trademark Laws IN THE UK that came into effect on the 14th January this year (2019) .The list is here;
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/implementation-of-the-trade-mark-directive-2015/implementation-of-the-eu-trade-mark-directive-2015
I would refer to one change particularly ,this one;
11.1 Using a name as a trade mark and defending that use (including ‘own name defence’)
The law is changing in two respects:
the use of a trade or company name (or part of a trade or company name) is now specifically included within the list of infringing acts
the ‘defence’ against infringement now only applies if you are using your own personal name (‘own name defence’). It no longer applies if you are using your company’s name
What does it mean?
You may now be subject to infringement proceedings if you are using a company name which conflicts with someone else’s trade mark. This contrasts with the previous situation, in which if you were using a company name which conflicts with someone else’s trade mark, you may have had a defence against infringement.
JUST wondering whether than will mean that a ,for example, US company with the name ,example “ABCD Inc” would be infringing a UK trademark for ABCD ,as it seems it would if it did business in UK. Anyway slightly off topic.
Domainer says
If my memory is correct, 12 or 15 yrs ago, there was an UK company that went after every domain that contained the word – easy.