Mid June Doug talked about a family in Scotland who were being sued over the domain name Narnia.mobi by the estate of CS Lewis.
Well news comes out today that a verdict was reached, and the poor little boy will lose his domain name.
The arbitrator ruled that Saville-Smith “registered and is using the disputed domain name in bad faith.”Towns, a Texas trademark specialist, said he was not convinced Saville-Smith had not aimed to make money from narnia.mobi by allowing it to be linked to commercial sites. Saville-Smith denied this.
Now before people start gathering pitchforks and torches aimed at big money corporations, I have to say I side with the Lewis Estate on this.
The original defense was that they bought the domain innocently, hoping to give it to their son to make a fan website and be able to use the extension as his email address. So immediately the Lewis Estate is painted up as the badguys. You can’t take away this little boy’s birthday present. Futhermore, the domain is publicly available. If it belonged to someone else, they couldn’t buy it right??
But this was not the case. This domain name was bought TWO YEARS AGO and they did nothing with it. There are certain provisions on internet registration that consider this “squatting” Sitting on a domain name you scooped up hoping that the people who you anticipate would really WANT that domain name would pay you for it.
For instance, Michael J Fox wanted his website to be MichaelJFox.com but some Fox fan already owned it. Sorry Mikey. That guy got it first and he is legitimately using the domain. Fortunately for Fox, the uber fan named his price of a face to face meeting with his idol and gladly handed the domain name over no charge.
But after careful consideration, this is not what the family intended with this domain, and with evidence like another website registered by the boy’s father that exploited the popularity of the case (hosting advertising links) showed that the domain was not purchased in good faith. And the judge sided that their intentions were to get financial gain from the site.
The case is expected to be appealed, but I would imagine it will have the same result.
4 Comments, Comment or Ping
Slushie Man
I don’t mind the big corporations crushing the little guys, when the little guys deserve it, as they did with this case.
Jul 24th, 2008
UnoriginalGuy
Sorry but both you and them are incorrect and this is obviously a case of big corp’s stamping on the little guy.
The site had nothing on it. You admit that and so do they. But then you further suggest that the reason that the site should have been handed over is that it could have had something on it.
Wait. So your case is both that the sites does and does not have content on it?
The whole “the father owned another site with adverts on it” argument is flawed. It is a standard Ad Hominem attack that if the judge was competent wouldn’t have been allowed in the proceedings. It is no more or less valid than for example using the victim’s sexual history to justify a rape. Or using the victim’s criminal record to justify why they reserved for you to kill them.
But frankly I’ve been reading this blog a while and have come to expect you siding with the industry in 9/10 cases.
Jul 24th, 2008
Slushie Man
Hey look, it’s one of them there people that *always* sides against the ‘big, bad corporations’.
“Damn the Man, Damn the Man, I say!”
See, I can do it too when I want. Although I don’t see the appeal to it. It’s much more fun to, you know, base it off the actual situation.
Jul 24th, 2008
Rodney
So “unoriginal” guy, explain how the UN Courts managed to find sufficient evidence that the efforts of this internet squatter was to finanacially benefit from the scooping of a domain name.
The site that brought about the lawsuit was empty. It wasn’t until the estate of Lewis filed suit against him that he put up ANOTHER site (savenarnia.mobi) to earn traffic. I never claimed that the original site had ads on it. I said the supporting site did. You might want to read the article and links again.
The laws are very clear that had they scooped this coveted name and actually USED the site for say a fansite, then they would have been hard pressed to find a case against him. That’s not squatting. It was this combined with other evidence that caused them to lose the case.
Im not siding with the big money. I am siding with the court’s decision because it is valid and legal. If he was just some fanboy they were trying to tear down over a domain, i would side with the family.
And if you did read this site with any regularity you will see that we often side AGAINST corporate bullshit. The big guy shoving his money around instead of actually being right is always called on it here at TMB.
Jul 24th, 2008
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