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posted by janrinok on Wednesday July 01 2015, @03:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the lawsuit-that-should-'workbetter' dept.

Cybersquatting is registering, selling or using a domain name with the intent of profiting from the goodwill of someone else's trademark. It generally refers to the practice of buying up domain names that use the names of existing businesses with the intent to sell the names for a profit to those businesses. Now Andrew Allmann writes at Domain Name Wire that New York company Office Space Solutions, Inc. has filed a cybersquatting lawsuit against Jason Kneen over the domain name WorkBetter.com that Kneen registered in 1999 although Office Space Solutions didn't use the term "Work Better" in commerce until 2015.

"Workbetter.com is virtually identical to, and/or confusingly similar to the WORK BETTER Service Mark, which was distinctive at the time that the Defendant renewed and/or updated the registration of workbetter.com," says the lawsuit. But according to an Office Space Solutions' filing with the USPTO, it didn't use the term "Work Better" in commerce until 2015. Office Space Solutions is making the argument that the domain name was renewed in bad faith. According to Kneen, Office Space previously tried to purchase the domain name from him and after it failed to acquire the domain name, is now trying to take it via a lawsuit.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JeanCroix on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:09PM

    by JeanCroix (573) on Wednesday July 01 2015, @02:09PM (#203765)
    I see you have a rather nice sized front yard that you're not using for much of anything. I'm filing a lawsuit to get eminent domain on it so I can plop a strip mall in there. I'm sure the system wants my $REASON to trump your $ELIPHINO...
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  • (Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Thursday July 02 2015, @11:13AM

    by FakeBeldin (3360) on Thursday July 02 2015, @11:13AM (#204162) Journal

    If that's not what we want, we should put a different system in place.
    Tempest made a good point that you don't need to use a domain name for hosting a web site to use it anyway (FTP, SMTP, usenet, server, etc.). Lack of HTML does not mean lack of need to connect. It also need not mean a lack of need for a specific domain name. We have a system to evaluate that question. If we don't like the system's results in general, we should fix the system.

    In your example: you're of course able to try and sue for that sort of thing. I'm guessing any judge will toss your case out without hearing - actually I bet that if the filing clerk had the appropriate responsibilities for this, the clerk would toss it out. So that system seems to work.

    • (Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Thursday July 02 2015, @11:48AM

      by JeanCroix (573) on Thursday July 02 2015, @11:48AM (#204171)
      I would hope that most judges or even filing clerks would toss my case, but unfortunately the highest court in the land (my land anyway, not sure what country you hail from) gave exactly that sort of land grab its stamp of approval a few years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London [wikipedia.org] The system working this way should worry anyone who lives here.