Intermittens Must Stop Publication : YOU'VE BEEN JAKED! TFT!

[Shine Your Light]

Dear PrincipiaDiscordia.com:

While performing an Internet search, one of our employees discovered that you have started a publication that you are calling "Intermittens."  We urge you to stop.

"Intermittens" is a trademark of Shine Your Light, which is headquarted in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada.  While your site was registered on 30 October of 2000 with Dreamhost in the United States, the earliest reference to Intermittens on your site appeared in 2008.  We registered the domain name "Intermittens.com" on 11 April of 2003, and renewed it on 28 September of 2007 to extend our ownership of the domain through 11 April of 2013.

It is very clear that we have the prior and current claim to the use of the name "Intermittens."  Because of general international agreements and specific treaties between the United States and Canada, any use of the name "Intermittens" without permission is a violation of Canadian and U. S. law.  Note that prior registration is not required for the filing of a lawsuit in regard to such ownership.  (Please consult Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights of the World Trade Organization (WTO)).

We do, however, wish to avoid the time and cost of bringing legal action against you, and assume you do not want it brought against you.  Therefore, if you will cease and desist from using the name "Intermittens" for your magazine or for any other publication, product, item, or any goods or service within a period of fourteen (14) days from this notice, we will accept that as compliance.

This shall be considered official notification, in accordance with Canadian and United States federal law.

If you have any questions, you may call our office at (604) 736-4743 or send us a Fax to (604) 224-5557.

Shine Your Light
302W-801 East 6th Ave
Vancouver, British Columbia V5T 1L8
Canada

.................................................

NOTICE:

Consider this a Kopyleft submission for Intermittens, SPAGS!

TFT! 

[Cain]

You want to sue us over a site you don't even use?

Tell me, can you spell the word "petty"?

[Faust]

I am the owner of this site:
I will certainly remove any hosting of intermittens publications here if that makes you happy and can prove your trademarking of term intermittens, but seeing as I am not responsible for the publication, I cannot promise that publication will end, it will however end here.

Please note that nowhere on this site has intermittens.com been mentioned.

I would however like to see your registering of the trademark "intermittens" please, if you do not we are quite happy to buy intermittens.net, or .org or any of the other available domains.

[Kai]

I've looked at intermittens.com. There is nothing there. You have no corporation, nor writings, nor anything that can be found associated with the name intermittens except an internet domain name. In fact, upon a search of "shine your light" and "intermittens", I find only a single hit. This same hit showed me you have 15 other domains registered to your name, none of which are likely in use. As far as I know, paying for a domain name on the internet does not give you copyright or trademark of said name, UNLESS you are using it to or for the purpose of conducting buisness. At this time there is nothing there, and there is no other corroborating evidence.

Via the US Ninth Circut Court of Appeals,  Bosley Medical Institute v. Kremer, No. 04-55962 (April 4, 2005), held that domain names must be used in some association with or for the future purpose of the sale of goods or services in order to be considered trademarked under copyright law. There is no sign of sale of goods or services at your domain, FURTHERMORE, the intermittens publication is printed not for sale and freely distributed.

You have no ground to stand on.

[Kai]

Faust, you can access the trademark electronic search system here: http://www.uspto.gov/main/trademarks.htm

I can't find any trademark associated with 'intermittens'.

[Kai]

From the 9th Circut's Court opinion:

We hold today
that the noncommercial use of a trademark as the domain name of a
website - the subject of which is consumer commentary about the
products and services represented by the mark - does not
constitute infringement under the Lanham Act.

[LMNO]

Well, now we know what happened to Issue #4...

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

A) No content/work/anything at Intermittens.com. Courts don't like domain squatters.
B) If we had Intermittens magazine and then someone registered Intermittens.com we would have legal grounds to get that name (or try to). It doesn't work that way in reverse though.
C) Since there is no content on Internittens.com then they are not running an online magazine. Therefore we are not competition.

We deal with this kind of stuff all the time at the office.

PROTIP: My good friend in our legal dept says he's happy to provide PROTIPS

[LMNO]

Yeah, but we don't really have a legal fund.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Yeah, but we don't really have a legal fund.

My guess is, neither do the squatters

[Kai]

A) No content/work/anything at Intermittens.com. Courts don't like domain squatters.
B) If we had Intermittens magazine and then someone registered Intermittens.com we would have legal grounds to get that name (or try to). It doesn't work that way in reverse though.
C) Since there is no content on Internittens.com then they are not running an online magazine. Therefore we are not competition.

We deal with this kind of stuff all the time at the office.

PROTIP: My good friend in our legal dept says he's happy to provide PROTIPS

I think from the 9th court opinion its pretty clear that they don't have any ground to stand on. You can't claim a domain name as a trademark unless you are or plan on using it to sell goods or services, its that simple.

[Cain]

I love it when a plan comes together. 

[LMNO]

Hold on, guys.  This might be a lot more interesting than we first thought.

"Shine Your Light" was a song written by Robbie Robertson for the film "Ladder 49" (released in 2004).

Robertson is a Canadian.

These guys might be a subsidiary company for Robbie himself!  Which would be really cool, even if the Band kind of destroyed Rock & Roll in the 70s.

[Payne]

Robbie Robertson, why do you hate D.I.Y. magazines?

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

A) No content/work/anything at Intermittens.com. Courts don't like domain squatters.
B) If we had Intermittens magazine and then someone registered Intermittens.com we would have legal grounds to get that name (or try to). It doesn't work that way in reverse though.
C) Since there is no content on Internittens.com then they are not running an online magazine. Therefore we are not competition.

We deal with this kind of stuff all the time at the office.

PROTIP: My good friend in our legal dept says he's happy to provide PROTIPS

I think from the 9th court opinion its pretty clear that they don't have any ground to stand on. You can't claim a domain name as a trademark unless you are or plan on using it to sell goods or services, its that simple.

Yep!
In fact, even if they were using the domain... unless their product was an online magazine, it still wouldn't be infringement.