IT.COM

legal France seizes France.com from man who’s had it since ‘94, so he sues

Spaceship Spaceship
Watch

Constantin S

Top Member
Impact
6,420
A French-born American has now sued his home country because, he claims, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has illegally seized a domain that he’s owned since 1994: France.com.

In the mid-1990s, Jean-Noël Frydman bought France.com from Web.com and set up a website to serve as a "digital kiosk" for Francophiles and Francophones in the United States.

For over 20 years, Frydman built up a business (also known as France.com)
Finally, on March 12, 2018, Web.com abruptly transferred ownership of the domain to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The company did so without any formal notification to Frydman and no compensation.

"I'm probably [one of Web.com's] oldest customers," Frydman told Ars.
Sources:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...com-from-man-whos-had-it-since-94-so-he-sues/
I also seen this on 1st page of Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/8frmzc/france_seizes_francecom_from_man_whos_had_it/

EDIT: I see people wondering who's crazy to use web.com/NetworkSolutions, this should answer your question: :)
https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/networksolutions.com#trafficstats
 
Last edited:
13
•••
The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Thank you. @jberryhill for the update! So the Judge released (were they not enjoined?) Verisign on May 9th? I don’t have subscription access to read the stip but curious why and what transpired. The complaint stated the transfer it was done in “Secret”, without notification to Registrant. So wasn’t such action done in bad faith and also relevant to the case?. If not, what was argued legally or agreed before the Judge to separate them from the lawsuit? If and when you have time, appreciate it. Thank you.
 
0
•••
Be that as it may, a foreign defendant has 60 days to reply, which would have been May 6. As that is a Saturday, their answer is due today. If they have answered, then it may wash up on the docket tomorrow.

Thanks for the update John.

Did you mean MAY 6? Which is next month :)
 
0
•••
oh, yeah, got my dates mixed up.... next month.
 
1
•••
Situations like this is one reason I started moving away from Geo's over the last few years.

At one point, I had most the top geo-city + logo .com's with the highest population counts per capita.

Most were mini-service lead generators.

When those were ddosed and sql/htaccess injected, I decided to dump the network instead of rebuilding.

Why? Because of the domino/snowball effect involving seizures like this one.

Don't think for a second that it will stop at country .com. once countries get firm footing, control, and experience taking these, you can bet states, counties, provinces, cities, etc. within those countries will follow suit, eventually.

This industry is constantly evolving. Sometimes it benefits investors and other times it benefits those leveraging a hostile takeover of the asset. Being a government or agency contracted through said government just makes it harder for the average Joe to successfully contest a geo-asset dispute.

In my personal opinion anyways.
 
2
•••
but curious why and what transpired

Verisign had nothing to do with the transfer anyway. In all likelihood, Verisign agreed that if the court orders transfer to the registrar of the plaintiff's choice, then Verisign will implement the order.
 
1
•••
Verisign had nothing to do with the transfer anyway. In all likelihood, Verisign agreed that if the court orders transfer to the registrar of the plaintiff's choice, then Verisign will implement the order.

Thank you. My understanding from OP’s first post here from the ARStechnica article snipped below was based on a TM claim transfer out without “due process”. A foreign court ordered the transfer, not a US court where the legal entity resides and they are now unfortunately in US litigation. I guess legal jurisdiction is my question and International Law being applied. I thought any foreign judgements needed to be relitigated in the domicile of the Respondent. This must mean that any Registry can simply be strong-armed by a foreign entity and comply with any foreign laws regardless of Registrants US domicile and local laws? I hope not.

“By September 2017, the Paris Court of Appeals ruled that France.com was violating French trademark law. Armed with this ruling, lawyers representing the French state wrote to Web.com demanding that the domain be handed over.

Finally, on March 12, 2018, Web.com abruptly transferred ownership of the domain to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The company did so without any formal notification to Frydman and no compensation.

"I'm probably [one of Web.com's] oldest customers," Frydman told Ars. "I've been with them for 24 years... There's never been any cases against France.com, and they just did that without any notice. I've never been treated like that by any company anywhere in the world. If it happened to me, it can happen to anyone."
 
1
•••
I have no idea what you are driving at in much of your post, offthehandle, but I would suggest that you firm up the difference between a "registry" and a "registrar". Verisign, the registry, didn't transfer the domain name from anyone or to anyone.

This must mean that any Registry can simply be strong-armed by a foreign entity and comply with any foreign laws regardless of Registrants US domicile and local laws? I hope not.

Mr. Frydman was a party to the lawsuit in France.

I thought any foreign judgements needed to be relitigated in the domicile of the Respondent.

That's a complicated topic. Whether a foreign judgment is subject to what is known as a "collateral attack" depends on a number of things.
 
1
•••
I have no idea what you are driving at in much of your post, offthehandle, but I would suggest that you firm up the difference between a "registry" and a "registrar". Verisign, the registry, didn't transfer the domain name from anyone or to anyone.

My mistake for continual communication error and mixing them up. NetSol transferred the Name. I have plowed through ICANN rules and for example the TDRP does not apply in this case, as the dispute isn’t between Registrars. However, noticed ICANN does not define the court venue just “competent jurisidiction”. It is open ended as to “competent”. So I suppose the Venue could be anywhere regardless of Registrants home country?

3.4 Availability of Court Proceedings
The procedures set forth above shall not prevent a Registrar from submitting a dispute to a court of competent jurisdiction for independent resolution before such administrative proceeding is commenced or after such proceeding is concluded.”

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/tdrp-2016-06-01-en

In your experience, Are you aware of any cases of intervention in the form of a lock or hold made by the Registry in these “out of normal” sort of cases? The hierarchy of contract between Verisign and NetSol states, the Registry has the ultimate say:

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/appendix-08-2012-12-07-en

“In its registration agreement with each Registered Name Holder, Registrar shall require such Registered Name Holder to:

(a) acknowledge and agree that Verisign reserves the right to deny, cancel or transfer any registration or transaction, or place any domain name(s) on registry lock, hold or similar status, as it deems necessary, in its unlimited and sole discretion: “

Once again, thank you.
 
0
•••
Finally there is movement in this case.

Arguments were heard on Friday (May 31st) in federal court right here in Northern Virginia.

Jean-Noel Frydman's lawyers stated the obvious: How can France argue it has an inherent trademark to the word "France," when in 2009, it agreed to surrender any such claims in communications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Furthermore, exact-match geographic terms have never qualified for trademarks. According to U.S. federal law, 15 U.S.C. §1210.02, a trademark application can be refused when the proposed mark is primarily geographic:

"The significance of a mark is primarily geographic if it identifies a real and significant geographic location and the primary meaning of the mark is the geographic meaning. A geographic location may be any term identifying a country, city, state, continent, locality, region, area, or street."
 
10
•••
Spent 30 minutes searching and cannot find anything in the latest news on google for free reading. The docket was posted earlier in the thread, going to read it.
 
Last edited:
0
•••
You are correct. There is a legal news site and you can only read the first paragraph for free. But that is my source for my above update.

Do a Google news search for ' "France.com" ' and ' "Domain" ' where you use the inner quotation marks. (You need to put quotation marks around "France.com" for Google to use that whole phrase.)
 
0
•••
https://www.namepros.com/threads/fr...nce-94-so-he-sues.1078710/page-5#post-7185925

You are correct. There is a legal news site and you can only read the first paragraph for free. But that is my source for my above update.

Do a Google news search for ' "France.com" ' and ' "Domain" ' where you use the inner quotation marks. (You need to put quotation marks around "France.com" for Google to use that whole phrase.)

Thanks. Yes, I did that and found the law360 link, but then rereviewed this thread post above and after looking at John Berryhills docket link above, tried to read more motions, but requires a subscription which I don’t have. Also, the docket link isnt fully up to date to May 31st date.

Good news story maybe for @equity78 ?
 
0
•••
From reading only the messages here. This is just the US Patent & Trademark Office opinion. What does the EU Patent & Trademark Office say about this? Wouldn't that be more relevant? France being in the EC. I cannot see the French Government, giving up France.com without a fight to the death. Despite it's usage, .COM is not a US domain.
 
Last edited:
1
•••
2
•••
The problem with this case is that the registrar immediately transferred the France.com domain over to France, after a clearly-biased French gov't-owned & operated French court decided to award France.com to France, without inquiring with the owner or holding it for a potential appeal.

Once it's over in France's possession, good luck ever getting it back. If it had never left, and the biased and fraudulent French court decision been appealed, the rightful owner would have had a good chance of keeping it.
 
2
•••
This case is devastating to the value of basically all GEO domains which are at very high risk of loss. IMO, most geo domains are now worth a fraction of what they were valued at several years ago. In fact, successfully selling a geo name for a good price should prove extremely difficult as word on this court case spreads.

It could easily happen to other GEO name where any nation, province, state, county or city who wants a name simply goes to a local court. They can also use the FRANCE.COM case as setting a legal precedent to get a favorable local court judgement.
 
Last edited:
0
•••
It could easily happen to other GEO name where any nation, province, state, county or city who wants a name simply goes to a local court.

This case is a real joke, but it certainly will give other countries ideas when it comes to repossessing their country's .COM name.

By using a French government court, the French government miraculously won the court case there :wacky:, and however idiotic, biased, predetermined, and self-directed the decision was, it still creates a kind of "look at what happened to France.com" precedent for any other jerk countries who want to pull off the same scam.

Personally, I would not put any significant money into country GEO-domains, as all it takes is a crazy leader being elected, some fraudulent/homer local court decisions, and suddenly your investment is gone.
 
0
•••
...Personally, I would not put any significant money into country GEO-domains, as all it takes is a crazy leader being elected, some fraudulent/homer local court decisions, and suddenly your investment is gone.

The expected massive decline in value of GEO domains is made even worse in that it does not require a "crazy leader" the President of France is far from being crazy and appears to me to be the complete opposite.

I would not be surprised if the President was not involved in the matter and the French Tourism board or a related gov agency may have been the instigator.

As a direct result of the France.com litigation I would expect a similar geo name which may have been valued somewhere in the 7-figures range in the past may be difficult to sell for more 5-figures now.
 
Last edited:
0
•••
The expected massive decline in value of GEO domains is made even worse in that it does not require a "crazy leader" the President of France is far from being crazy and appears to me to be the complete opposite.

Regardless, using your own court system to scam a rightfully owned domain certainly reflects badly on their leaders and France itself.

It makes them look like a petty little oligarch (which they continually act like), that engages in fixed-game, ethnocentric, anti-capitalist tactics when they see something they want, but can't have.

As we said in Europe, its "just like the French" to pull something like this.
 
3
•••
The problem with this case is that the registrar immediately transferred the France.com domain over to France, after a clearly-biased French gov't-owned & operated French court decided to award France.com to France, without inquiring with the owner or holding it for a potential appeal.

Once it's over in France's possession, good luck ever getting it back. If it had never left, and the biased and fraudulent French court decision been appealed, the rightful owner would have had a good chance of keeping it.

I agree with this entirely. If web.com/netsol didn't transfer the domain out immediately, it would stay with the rightful owner. As if people needed more evidence that netsol is not to be trusted.
 
0
•••
This is a problem that the register created by moving the domain over to France. the correct way say France is Français. What they are now admitting that they prefer the English spelling of County thats why want FRANCE.com. Napoleon would be turning in his grave with this one. It could be used as legal arguement that FRANCE.com is not the correct name of the country as it is not French but ENGLISH.

To me it cant claim sovereignty rights to domain as its not part French language.
 
2
•••
the correct way say France is Français. What they are now admitting that they prefer the English spelling of County thats why want FRANCE.com. Napoleon would be turning in his grave with this one.
Doesn't français kind of mean 'french' rather than 'France'? I think in France, 'France' is the same :xf.smile:
That's by-the-by though.. a government has no more 'right' to a word or name than anyone else. 'They' got beat to it, and cooperated with it for years. This fella's been done over (and continues to be done over) by people of all different persuasions but with one common denominator - they are all a bunch of sh*ts. This is a fundamental issue of humanity right here in the domain world. Are you people or sheeple?
 
Last edited:
2
•••
2
•••
The original owner should sue netsol. They basically transferred away a domain that did not belong to them.

The domain should have remained with the registrant until all legal avenues had been exhausted. That simply didn’t happen here which is why legal proceedings are still ongoing.
 
1
•••
The original owner should sue netsol. They basically transferred away a domain that did not belong to them.

The domain should have remained with the registrant until all legal avenues had been exhausted. That simply didn’t happen here which is why legal proceedings are still ongoing.
This was my exact thought. Network Solutions is not helping its customers and they hardly ever respond to any allegations/
 
0
•••
Back