Monografias.com Gets its Accent

[WhoNet]

Monografias.com Gets its Accent

Monografias.com, one of the most popular sites in Latin America, wins over its accented domain with the help of WIPO.

LOS ANGELES, July 21 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ -- On May 28, 2008 a Panel from the Arbitration and Mediation Center of WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization, ruled in favor of Monografias.com and ordered the transfer of the disputed domain name http://www.monografias.com (with the accent on the letter i).

The Internet configuration identifies characters in a code named ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), which is a code based on the Latin alphabet but does not allow the use of accents. However, some domain name registrars have found a way to register domain names with accents by using characters of other codes that can be translated through an encoding system called Punycode, which is compatible with ASCII.

In this example, if a user types in the accented URL http://www.monografias.com in a web browser, he or she would be taken to the encoded URL http://www.xn-monografas-r8a.com . This issue also affects other well known trademarks such as the newspapers Clarin and La Nacion from Argentina or El Pais from Spain, among others.

In this novel case the WIPO recognized the use of the new technologies and considered the Respondent's registration in bad faith, allowing the Complainant to claim the disputed domain name.

About Monografias.com
Monografias.com (the word meaning Spanish for monograph, a detailed and documented treatise on a particular subject) was launched in 1997 as a community-built educational resource to allow individuals to freely access and publish information in Spanish on the Internet. Over the years it has grown to become one of the most popular destinations for Spanish-speakers worldwide and is among the top sites in Latin America, attracting over 17 million unique visitors per month.

http://www.extranews.net/news_pr.php?nid=11985

 

[jberryhill]

Monografias.com (the word meaning Spanish for monograph, a detailed and documented treatise on a particular subject)

Oh, I love that.

 

[liquidcherry]

Bad news for all the IDN squatters :cy:

Cheers

Frank

Disclaimer: i am not saying everyone who regs IDN is a squatter!!

 

[jberryhill]

Compare:

http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2008/d2008-0767.html
matériel.net
> Complaint denied

As discussed above, in connection with the second element of the Complaint, the record suggests that the Respondent chose the Domain Name for its generic value as a dictionary word in French, to link Internet users to a French-language eBay auction website for computer and electronics equipment, consistent with the sense of the Domain Name. The Complainant has not established the likelihood that its MATERIEL.NET trademark, featuring a slightly misspelled version of the French word “matériel”, was so well-established and widely known that the Respondent must in the circumstances have had the mark in contemplation when it registered the Domain Name.

 

[liquidcherry]

wow..

a bit confusing for me but interesting, the respondant had a good thing on his side,registering generics in different languages was a smart move

But what i find confusing is this:

"Accordingly, the Panel finds that the Domain Name is confusingly similar to the trademark for purposes of the first element of the Complaint."

And then:


Media General Communications, supra, identified factual circumstances in such cases that support a finding of legitimate interest:

- the respondent makes good-faith efforts to avoid registering and using domain names that are identical or confusingly similar to marks held by others;


- the domain name is not identical or confusingly similar to a famous or distinctive trademark;

??

And my last question is....isn't a "panel" more than one person?

--> W. Scott Blackmer
Sole Panelist



Cheers

Frank

 

[jberryhill]

isn't a "panel" more than one person?

For formal purposes, it is akin to the judicial "we".

 

[liquidcherry]

For formal purposes, it is akin to the judicial "we".

Thx JB, one will never stop learning

Cheers

Frank

 

[jberryhill]

Thx JB, one will never stop learning

You can say that again. I defended the respondent in the monografias.com case!

 

[liquidcherry]

hmmmmmm, let me read everything again.....

 

[jberryhill]

http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2008/d2008-0140.html

Now, look at the actual mark:

http://tess2.uspto.gov/ImageAgent/ImageAgentProxy?getImage=78305917

It's a bullshit decision.

 

[Bramiozo]

The Internet configuration identifies characters in a code named ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), which is a code based on the Latin alphabet but does not allow the use of accents. However, some domain name registrars have found a way to register domain names with accents by using characters of other codes that can be translated through an encoding system called Punycode, which is compatible with ASCII.

If you ever read such ignorance, man oh man, they even claim that
Monografias.com is the word meaning Spanish for monograph, wow, cool, for one they decided the accent is irrelevant and second the .com doesn't effect it.
Can I find this under bullshit.com in webster ?

These idiots completely ignored the generic nature of the term and they completely ignored the fact that the respondent was involved in the legitimate business of trading generic domain names. Also they just assumed that having a parking page automatically means promoting the competition, which is nonsense since you can block ads. Also the wipo case they refer to for this argument says Second, the content of Respondent’s websites belies its defense that it is merely using the Trademarks in their descriptive meaning. It is true that, if the links on a landing page are genuinely based on the generic value of a domain name, that generally would be a fair use because there are no trademark rights implicated by the landing page. See, e.g., Landmark Group v. DigiMedia.com, L.P., NAF Claim No. 285459 (legitimate interest “[if] the domain names have been registered because of their attraction as dictionary words, and not because of their value as trademarks”);. How did they miss that ?

Damn abitrage, you cynically implied that you never stop learning, but shouldn't there be a time when past experience i.e. jurisprudence is a fine indicator for the future ?

Bad news for all the IDN squatters :cy:

Cheers

Frank

Disclaimer: i am not saying everyone who regs IDN is a squatter!!

This is about someone who registered a dictionary word and got his name taken from him because of a trademark he thought couldn't exist.

Let's reserve squatter for the people who register trademark infringing terms based on their infringing quality.

Albeit that such a relatively obscure spanish term would not normally fetch $6000+ (especially not 2 years ago) but remember that wasn't part of their consideration.

 

[jberryhill]

If you ever read such ignorance, man oh man, they even claim that
Monografias.com is the word meaning Spanish for monograph, wow, cool, for one they decided the accent is irrelevant and second the .com doesn't effect it.

Pretty amazing reasoning, eh? The term is spelled correctly with the accent, and the complaint called the Respondent a "typosquatter".

So, in a reach, the Panel looked at the meta-tags on the site - as if those had the kind of relevance they did back in, oh, 1994 or so - and decided that the appearance of "monografias" in an ASCII file made the domain registration "abusive".

The entire thing was brain-damaged.

This is about someone who registered a dictionary word and got his name taken from him because of a trademark he thought couldn't exist.

...and which does not in fact exist.

 

[npcomplete]

You can say that again. I defended the respondent in the monografias.com case!

http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2008/d2008-0140.html

Now, look at the actual mark:

http://tess2.uspto.gov/ImageAgent/ImageAgentProxy?getImage=78305917

It's a bullshit decision.

I couldn't have said it better. Total BS decision. The only mistake by the respondent I could find was the meta tag listing the Monografias.com site. Probably not a wise thing to do since it proves prior knowledge of the mark. Other than the mistake by respondent with meta tags, this was reverse hijacking IMHO.

It is almost as if the "panel" single handedly elevated the (3) design mark to a (4) Standard Character claim in making the decision. I realize that there is no exclusionary sentence commonly found in weak generics, like "no claim is made to blahblah apart from the mark as show", but this decision was a stretch... at best.

 

[jberryhill]

I realize that there is no exclusionary sentence commonly found in weak generics, like "no claim is made to blahblah apart from the mark as show"

Look again, the US registration includes a "foreign word translation" statement.

Complainant's attorney is a UDRP panelist, btw. Go figure.

It cracks me up that in their own press release, they include a statement to the effect that it's a generic word.

 

[Bramiozo]

I take it the respondent let it go completely, no appeal in civil court ?

 

[jberryhill]

I take it the respondent let it go completely, no appeal in civil court ?

Sooner or later, there comes a question of economic efficiency.

The only mistake by the respondent I could find was the meta tag listing the Monografias.com site.

HTML is an ASCII format.