UDRP shopify.ai

[Igor Gabrielan]

Today the company Shopify started a dispute with me regarding the name shopify.ai .
I have many excellent arguments, which I will describe later.

 

[Igor Gabrielan]

Apparently, he likes peacefully jumping kangaroos more than predatory lawyers.

 

[jberryhill]

Apparently, he likes peacefully jumping kangaroos more than predatory lawyers.

No, he wants to kill people. He has a couple of operating websites which also are used to communicate death threats.

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/t...k/news-story/bec313b5330a17cf242124f43547b13c

A TOWNSVILLE man is behind bars for allegedly threatening to kill Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Facebook for implementing a ban on live exports.

Jeffrey Charles Geaney, 38, appeared briefly at Townsville Magistrates Court yesterday on three charges of using a carriage service to threaten to kill, which each carry a maximum penalty of 10 years' jail.

The Townsville Bulletin reports in bail objection papers handed to Magistrate Peter Smid, Commonwealth prosecutor Aaron Guilfoyle said Mr Geaney's offending started after he wrote on Ms Gillard's Facebook page on Wednesday he was going to shoot her.

"I am going to shoot Julia Gillard with .223 calibre rifle over this (live exports) fiasco ... now who wants to donate me the bullet ..." one post read.

The papers showed Mr Geaney then allegedly called Ms Gillard's electoral office and repeated the same threat.

It was then claimed he called the Australian Federal Police operations command centre and informed them of his plan.

 

[Future Sensors]

No, he wants to kill people. He has a couple of operating websites which also are used to communicate death threats.

This is a major plot twist, attorney.

 

[Igor Gabrielan]

Can there be complaints about the domain names of three characters?
Intuitively, I don't.

 

[DomainNature]

Lucky me today I dropcatch a domain from Markmonitor with dead Trademark.

 

[antonio72]

Well, technically you can do that. The common words in the dictionary cannot be monopolized by anyone in the general scope.

You can use goggle.io, but you cannot use google.io since it's an invented word.
It's same for the "shopify". Somebody came up with that brand name, trademarked it globally and now it's their intellectual property.

If things didn't work that way, no one would be able to protect their creativity, make a profit, and it would be easy for malicious people to defame the brand.

I believe that invented words are creative artifacts in themselves too In all other cases, words should be free. Perhaps trademark offices could implement a simple script to query their database and provide customers with a list of available domain names at the time they register so to avoid later complains.

 

[Mize]

I believe that invented words are creative artifacts in themselves too In all other cases, words should be free. Perhaps trademark offices could implement a simple script to query their database and provide customers with a list of available domain names at the time they register so to avoid later complains.

soon, if not now: AI knows all the domains registered that contain a trademark term and can notify the trademark holder of potential infringement, if the infringement is within the AI's reach.

edit added:
Likewise, AI should allow USPTO to speed up trademark processing time, know unregistered marks within the AI's reach, keep up with which marks are about to obtain "famous" status and put a time stamp on it, etc.

 

[jberryhill]

Can there be complaints about the domain names of three characters?
Intuitively, I don't.

Domain	Case	Date	Decision
ibm.store	WIPO D2020-2419	2020-12-16	Transfer
ibm.onl	WIPO D2020-2213	2020-10-12	Transfer
ibm.nu	WIPO DNU2020-0003	2020-08-03	Transfer
ibm.buzz	WIPO D2014-1419	2014-10-29	Transfer
ibm.cc	WIPO DCC2011-0006	2012-01-13	Transfer
ibm.ro	WIPO DRO2010-0003	2010-07-19	Transfer
ibm.com.ro	WIPO DRO2010-0004	2010-07-16	Transfer

 

[Igor Gabrielan]

Hmm... Maybe this is an exception? I believed that three letters were not enough for distinguishing ability, and for each set of three letters, there were several companies using it.
By the way, I once sold lucy.ai name to people associated with IBM. It seems that Lucy was the name of a relative of the founder of IBM.

 

[Mize]

Igor, think of a trademark as a persons first and last name which is used as a means of identification:
Where the first name is the trademark: IBM
And the last name is the good or service: computer hardware and software

So if there are many ABC companies, the last name (good or service) helps you figure out which ABC company you are dealing with.

 

[jberryhill]

I believed that three letters were not enough for distinguishing ability, and for each set of three letters, there were several companies using it.

Let's try a quiz

1. Look at these sunglasses, which have a single letter printed on the temple:

Who makes these glasses?

2. This car has two letters on it:

Who makes that car?

3. This car has three letters on it:

Do those three letters distinctly identify a particular brand of car?

4. Here's ANOTHER car with three letter on it. Same question:

5. Here's a building with three letters on it:

What sort of business do you think goes on in that building?

6. How about this building with three letters on it:

Any idea what goes on in there?

7. Here's a printer with two letters on it:

Can you tell who made that printer?

8. You turn on your television and you see this:

Do you know where that news is coming from?

9. What if you turn on your television and see this instead:

Where does that news come from?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Extra credit question just for Igor:

Here are three letters on a building in Zaporizhzhia. Do you know what company that is and what they make?

Now, sure, I don't expect everyone from every country to necessarily be able to identify those marks, but everyone, everywhere is surrounded by three, two and even one letter trademarks pretty much every day.

 

[Igor Gabrielan]

I have never used glasses and do not understand what kind of glasses they are, nor do I know much else from what you have given (ING, UBS, DW) . But I do know something. But legal protection of such short brands is still more difficult, isn't it?

 

[kor]

You should stop wasting your time on someone pretending to be ignorant who thinks they can make money the easy way.

He knows we know what he knows.

 

[Igor Gabrielan]

I know that I know nothing

 

[Samer]

I’m amazed it took Shopify this long to dispute this blatant infringement.

 

[Igor Gabrielan]

There was no violation on my part, it was just that the fight was unfair, and the magic of big money worked.
If Proctor & Gamble had released "Shopify.ai" soap and made a website shopify.ai for it, Shopify would not even have gone into battle.
Can jberryhill give an example of when someone took the domain name of a powerful company?
Proctor would crush Shopify like a louse, and not one of the pack of sales lawyers would even nip in their direction.

 

[Andreas B.]

Love this thread, very entertaining.

Thanks for threadstarter @Igor Gabrielan for starting it.

 

[Mize]

There was no violation on my part, it was just that the fight was unfair, and the magic of big money worked.
If Proctor & Gamble had released "Shopify.ai" soap and made a website shopify.ai for it, Shopify would not even have gone into battle.
Can jberryhill give an example of when someone took the domain name of a powerful company?
Proctor would crush Shopify like a louse, and not one of the pack of sales lawyers would even nip in their direction.

Hi Igor,

Are you able to provide some fair use ways/or non infringing ways to use Shopify.ai that might have value to someone else? If so, what is your estimate of that value?

 

[frank-germany]

You are the only person in this thread who believes that. "Shopify" is not a word, and English is not German - we don't just string things together and make up words as we go along. The arguments along the lines "putting -ify on the end of a word is normal" or "someone else would have registered it" do not mean anything in a UDRP dispute. Since English is not your native language, you are probably not a good judge of what looks normal in English and what doesn't. "Shopify" is not some sort of existing or inevitable word.

It doesn't make sense because what would it mean? To make something shoppy? To turn something into a shop which was not a shop? It just does not work as an English word, and I don't think you are at all qualified on the subject of what "feels right" to English speakers. There's a loudmouth self-proclaimed expert domainer on Twitter who doesn't realize that his English sounds like a bad spam email. Hey, I get it, I can barely get by in broken Spanish and your English is phenomenal. But surely you understand that native speakers have a "feel" for what works and what doesn't. Yes, we have a lot of "-ify" words like "beautify", to make or increase a thing's beauty; "diversify", to make something diverse; humidify, to make something more humid. But you can't just stick -ify on the end of any English noun and come up with something that makes any sense. Shopify, to make something more like a shop? In most cases, the root word also ends or combines with -ty or -ity in a pair, like qualify/quality diversify/diversity humidify/humidity dignify/dignity, but the point is there are words that work well with "-ify" and words that don't work well. Now, as a trademark, "shopify" is borderline suggestive/fanciful because if it was a word, then it would sort of fit the idea of turning your website into a store.
But, bottom line, it is not a word, any more than cybersquattiousness - which, yeah, you could work out a meaning (like, the quality of having a tendency to engage in cybersquatting), but it is just not a freaking word. Its awkwardocity exceeds its meaningness.

Additionally, trademarks are not about who "invented" some made-up word or whether it is shares a suffix with other words. "Coca-Cola" is just the names of two plant ingredients - coca and cola - which go into making it. So what? Who cares? The point is that many people around the world know exactly who and what "Coca-Cola" is.

Likewise, anybody on the planet who knows anything about e-commerce knows who Shopify is and what they do.

Look at your first sentence in this thread:



"the company Shopify" - What company Shopify? You don't say, "Shopify, an e-commerce platform provider" in order to give us some idea of just what this company might be. And you don't have to for a simple reason: We all know who Shopify is.

Your first sentence in this thread assumes the fact that your audience knows who you are talking about when you refer to "the company Shopify". That, right there, the way you said that, demonstrates that it is a strong and well known trademark. We all know that. We don't react by thinking, "Gosh, whomever could he be talking about? I mean, "shopify" could mean so many different things." No, the reaction is more along the lines of having someone come in complaining, "I just went to a face slapping contest and got my face slapped!" Yeah, what did you think was going to happen there?

You did not have great chances, and there is no one who agrees with you. Now, sure, if you had some sort of expertise in the UDRP, that wouldn't be much of a problem. I'm frequently the bearer of bad news to people who have overly optimistic ideas of how strong are their arguments and how good are their chances. But, then again, there is no one else on the planet who has defended as many UDRPs as I have, so I'm really not too bothered if someone who has never been involved with a UDRP disagrees with me.

But, you might notice that Namepros members usually tend to be on the optimistic side of these things. Someone will show up, post a truly awful domain name, and Namepros members will go on about ridiculous reasons why it would survive a UDRP. Certainly, you have to have noticed this over time.

So, given that general background, when you are getting feedback from several others here who are not usually among the loonies (although I could go either way on that with one of the folks above), and they are telling you that it is utterly ridiculous to believe that a junior domain registration of "Shopify" dot anything was going to work out well, then you should really take into account that, most of the time, these threads are practically cheering sections for questionable domains supported by flimsy arguments.

You can't simply take that sort of consistent disagreement as a mere offense to your pride and dismiss every one who disagrees with you as an idiot. Granted, their disagreement may be expressed in harsh ways, but it is a harsh world, and they are at least telling you their honest opinion, regardless of how dopey a lot of the opinions around here tend to be.

That is all. Good luck with the CIIDRC, and I hope that someday you see your money back from Epik.

wow, what a profound and nice reply, John
thank you for the good time I had while reading

 

[Igor Gabrielan]

Hi Igor,

Are you able to provide some fair use ways/or non infringing ways to use Shopify.ai that might have value to someone else? If so, what is your estimate of that value?

The price is the same as storify.ai .
I try to sell at least 3-5 thousand.
Since it turned out that there is Shopify company that apparently has intellectual property in the field of trade, the most natural use of this name for retail tech may be difficult. The second honest and effective use is difficult for me to specify.
By the way, it seems that the founders of Shopify company did not mean the suffix "-ify", but the abbreviation of the word to simplify.

 

[Igor Gabrielan]

Of course, jberryhill is an outstanding representative of the old legal school. But even in his case, as Einstein proved that the light bends near large masses, jberryhill's vision of justice is slightly bent in the direction of big money. But the main thing is that now there may be a demand for more brash, young, and unprincipled lawyers who, instead of those with legal wisdom, will take a bribe to whoever needs it.

 

[Igor Gabrielan]

engaged in registering domain names as a temper tantrum.

Now someone has a temper tantrum, and he puts me cons on the forum.

 

[DomainNature]

I agree on the thing that when they see a big company is the complainant, everyone is ready to lick their asses.
I have put up my new website, prepare to bring hell to such companies.

 

[Zilla]

shopify.com never care about its .ai version at that time back to 2017, so why we should support shopify.com have the rights regard shopify.ai?

shopify.com may be famous in certain country or area, but why op must aware of it? as a regular one outside US and outside the e-commerce business, I never know shopify until some day I consider build a e-commerce website to sell products....and search related info.

Rule should be simple, who reg it, who own it as a global rule...the trademark owner need protect them-self by actively reg their own domain even early than any domainer....TM and domain should managed separately, see, shopify.com own the TM of "shopify", but OP still have the rights regard use term "shopify.ai"in his own biz...

I know above totally conflict with the mental model which most domainer already had for many years....but ...just rethink it...for 2 cents...

 

[kor]

I never know shopify until some day I consider build a e-commerce website to sell products

That's your problem, not shopify's. There are many free and open sources available for TM research.

TM and domain should managed separately

Too much ignorance!

OP still have the rights regard use term "shopify.ai"in his own biz

It's too late for that because this particular brand name is already trademarked. That's the point anyway.