FW: Weekly Recap
Dan Kohn (dan@teledesic.com)
Tue, 22 Oct 1996 12:30:11 -0700
>[ From INTERACTIVE MEDIA WEEKLY RECAP]
>
>Date: October 14, 1996
>
>In Intermatic Inc. v. Toeppen, the United States District Court for
>the Northern District of Illinois has decided a case involving the
>application of trademark laws to names used for Internet web sites.
>Intermatic sued Dennis Toeppen alleging that Toeppen's use of the
>Internet domain name "intermatic.com" was trademark infringement
>and unfair competition. The court ruled in favor of Intermatic,
>which holds a federal trademark registration for the Intermatic
>mark, and granted an injunction against Toeppen's use of the mark.
>Prior to registering the domain name, Toeppen had never used the
>Intermatic name.
>
>Toeppen operates an Internet service provider business called
>Net66. He had previously registered around 240 Internet domain
>names including "deltaairlines.com," "greatamerica.com," "neiman-
>marcus.com," "eddiebauer.com," "unionpacific.com,"
>"crateandbarrel.com," "ussteel.com" and others. According to the
>court, "Toeppen is what is commonly referred to as a
>cybersquatter."
>
>The court concluded that under federal and state trademark
>antidilution laws, Toeppen's conduct caused trademark dilution in
>two respects. First, Toeppen's registration of the intermatic.com
>domain name lessens the capacity of Intermatic to identify and
>distinguish its goods and services over the Internet. Second,
>Toeppen's conduct dilutes the Intermatic mark by using the
>Intermatic name on its web page.
P.S. This note was written from the Business Section on a BA flight to
Geneva. My chair has more buttons and options on it than my laptop.
(Hopefully, my chair will crash less than Win95 does ;-)