Hello
I thought his might amuse some of you.

We are the tech contact for a domain: http://www.mexbay.com/

I just got this from Ebay.com this morning



Dear Domain Name Registrant:
It recently has come to our attention that you have registered one or more
domain names that include the eBay name and trademark, and that you may also
be operating a Web site incorporating the eBay name.
As you know, eBay is a leader in person-to-person online trading and
maintains the www.ebay.com Web site. eBay owns exclusive trademark rights
to the eBay name in the United States and internationally. eBay has made a
substantial investment in developing and providing its services and has
acquired a tremendous amount of goodwill and brand equity in the eBay name.
As we hope you can appreciate, eBay is concerned that your unauthorized use
of the eBay name may cause confusion as to whether you or your company's
activities are authorized, endorsed or sponsored by eBay when, in fact, they
are not.
Federal and state laws, including the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection
Act of 1999, recently passed by Congress, provide for serious penalties (up
to $100,000) against persons who, without authorization, use, sell, or offer
for sale a domain name that infringes another's trademark. Infringers who
have been notified of such infringing activity, but do not cease their
infringements, may also be considered "willful" and could be subject to
additional money damages. Having received this e-mail, you are on such
notice .
For your information, the text of the Anticybersquatting Act may be found at
http://www.submerged-ideas.com/freedomains/law1.htm. More information on
trademark law may be found at http://www.fplc.edu/tfield/aVoid.htm.
While eBay respects your rights of expression and desire to do business on
the World Wide Web, eBay must enforce its own rights in order to protect its
valuable and famous name. We appreciate that you may have registered the
above-mentioned domains with the best of intentions and without full
knowledge of the law in this area. Nonetheless, under the circumstances, we
must insist that you:
(1) stop using the eBay name in your domain name;
(2) do not use such domain name(s) on an active web site;
(3) do not renew such domain names or register similar new domain names;
and
(4) do not sell or offer to sell such domain names to anyone.
Please confirm (by responding to this email) that you will comply as
requested above.
Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.
Susan K.
eBay Legal Department


Firstly, we are not the domain registrant, but that aside they seem to be claiming that their trademark Ebay.com covers any word with the letters "bay" at the end regardless of what the site is about.

I wrote back to them and said it was nothing to do with us. I would have come out stronger but its not our domain.

Anyway, what do you guys think about Ebay's stance on this?
Last year Easyjet.com started claiming the rights to any domain with the word "easy" in the title causing at least one company which existed before they did to have to abandon its domain name because of the costs of pursuing it.

What do you think?

Gordon

I looked at mexbay.com and don't see what the big stink is about. Even though have something on there about Auctions - Coming Soon, I don't think anybody is going to confuse the 2 sites.

I guess these 2 sites are in "trouble" also:
http://www.greenbay.com
http://www.bombay.com


jericho

I find it quite halrious.

The domain scalping law doesn't apply unless their actually trying to sell the name.

The trademark infringement doesn't mean much unless their actually running a auction site or something..

Basically its just big corporate bs lol.

not to meantion its no where near "eBay" mex bay.. nope i don't see it..

ebay mexbay ... bay is a standard word so it can't be trademarked...

Hi
I decided to ask Ebay's legal department for clarification:


Hello
I have given this matter some further consideration and would like to know
how you your registered trademark rights for "Ebay.com" are being infringed
by "Mexbay.com" when it is not an auction site and only has three characters
out of 10 in common.

Are you claiming the rights to the word "bay" and if so, does this include
all domain names including that combination of characters including domains
registered by entities prior to your existence.

The reason I ask is that not so long ago Easyjet.com tried to lever out
every domain containing the word "easy", even those which predated their
existence. As they didn't manage it I think you are priobably wasting your
time.
You would be much better to raise this under the ICANN Uniform Dispute
Resolution Policy with the registrar concerned.

Regards

Gordon Hudson
Hostroute.com Ltd



Actually I am sure the guy lives somewhere called Mexbay or Mexico bay anyway.

Gordon

Ebay is taking a lot of heat from sellers. Over the last year or so they've taken more and more incremental steps to restrict sellers and yet nickle-and-dime them with fee after fee for everything.

I think this yet another example of them trying to be a 500 pound gorilla.

I thought I read somewhere that the only way a domain can get introuble like that, is if it was bought on purpose to hurt the company, or something in the area of that. I might be wrong on this case though.

Originally posted by davidb
I thought I read somewhere that the only way a domain can get introuble like that, is if it was bought on purpose to hurt the company, or something in the area of that. I might be wrong on this case though.

Could be.

NTL, a company will try to go after someone who uses thier name or similar regardless of the business. For example, if you open a clothing store named MacDonald's because that's your family, you can rest assured the McDonald's Corp will be knocking on your door shortly even though your business has nothing to do with hamburgers.

Now that's a laugh! Get in touch with bay.com and tell them that a tardy little company called ebay has ripped them off! Whois shows that bay.com isn't owned by ebay, and, in fact, nor is e-bay.com! Now that's trouble!
As to easy, it's a common name-spin prefix, just like e is. Interesting if name spin easily causes legal trouble. What do the registrars care! Only a lawyer can resolve this, I suppose; we can just laugh - in contempt of ebay. Please report back on the further development.
Cheers
Anders

Um, if I were eBay, I would be more concerned over http://www.ebaysucks.com than http://www.mexbay.com.

There is a famous case in the UK of efax.co.uk, a British company which stared and electronic fax service 2 years before efax.com

Efax.com took them to court to try and get their domain name taken off them but the judge ruled that "e" as a prefix was generic and efax.com lost the case.

Here are a list of products I have not bought in the past year because the companies involved have tried to sue small traders over ridiculous name similarity problems:

Nissan People Carrier (you probably know about Nissan.com)
Easyjet airline tickets to London
Efax.com fax services
Barbie (this is a strictly Sindy household)

It mounts up to a tidy sum when you take the car into account.
I don't think I set out to avoid these products, but I had a bad impression of the companies and it did influence me. At the time I was responsible for booking lots of plane tickets and we switched airline over the Easyjet case.
I went to the Nissan dealer to look at cars and ended up with a slightly used Renault instead.

Gordon

jhhheessshhh
I would almost love to have em take me to court and let them loose so I could turn around and make a claim against them for mental
tehn also they would not be able to dik other people around anymore
I hate people companies like that
your domain is so far off
now if yu had ebaymex.com and did all acuctions yeah might be to close
if you had ebayharbour.com and you were a marina
who cares
that is my thought
like the other person wrote about london courts saying E is a generic thing now
everybody ahs esites

I would not respond at all if they bug ya again get a lawyer that will tak %40 of your take if you can
best of luck

Originally posted by jericho
http://www.greenbay.com

This one stuck out as funny to me. Maybe they will go after the city requesting that Greenbay cease using the name altogether? Personally, I'd ignore it, though good for a laugh.

I don't follow alot of news so I don't know if any "bad" stuff surrounded this...


ebayhosting.com just hit the deleted list a few days ago. and is still available :)

(Just found out about that chemical trainwreck thingie this afternoon)

GordonH,

You should write back to them that they don't have right to Spam.

You can also ask the owner of Mexbay.com, if they have received this email from Ebay to inform FTC (Federal Trade Commision) http://www.ftc.gov, since they are bliindly sending this notice tyope email to any one with bay in the end. Thats something trying poeple to stop doing a business... Look at the wordings...

(2) do not use such domain name(s) on an active web site;
(3) do not renew such domain names or register similar new domain names;
and
(4) do not sell or offer to sell such domain names to anyone

Aloha
or you could write htem back saying thanks
I just renewed it and got a few more like it
would you like to buy these from me ;)

TheBay was a dept store in Canada correct ???
wonder if they got in trouble (didnt sears buy em out ??

I might register a ebay name just for the fun of it.
let em come to me
here are some empty ones that might do the trick:


judgebay.com
(what we do to a caompany that sends out spam threats)

ebayhot.com
(burn baby burn)

ebaypub.com
(lets get drunk)

ebayhead.com
(the guy sending out these letters)

ebaystudio.com
(could make ebay sites out of this hehehe)

ebayhideout.com
(where all the people with ebay domains hideout from ebay)

hehehheehehhee
yes I am a child hehehehe

I wonder why they don't do anything against "TheBay" ( http://www.hudsonsbay.com/ ) :rolleyes:

Originally posted by Kiwi
I wonder why they don't do anything against "TheBay" ( http://www.hudsonsbay.com/ ) :rolleyes:

may be scared... becasue they might get kicked on thier a*** by Hudson's Bay Company.

"BidBay.com, a leading online auction site, has filed a motion to dismiss rival Ebay's trademark-infringement lawsuit."Read on (http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/010810/01030517.html)

uhhhh,
i am hosting carginanebay.com :confused:
What would the case be? Please answer BEFORE i get any sucking legal letter. :nuts:

i can see the case against www.bidbay.com it looks like ebay.com

Originally posted by microsol
i am hosting carginanebay.com :confused:
What would the case be? Please answer BEFORE i get any sucking legal letter. :nuts: There'd be no case. It's clear eBay just grabbed domain names with 'bay' at the end (probably with 'ebay' anywhere in the name, as well) and made a bulk mailing, probably just hoping that some of the sites that might actually be infringing on them will take the hint and back off before things escalate. Most importantly, as they do mention in the letter, under the ACPA they'd need to have made prior notice of "infringing activity." So they give notice even to people to whom it doesn't apply, but in the process if they later identify a real "infringer" they're already past that step.

did a search at uspto.gov to see if anyone holds a trademark or application on this name and the search turned up zero.. I do believe this is another act of big business scare tactics; interestingly the owner of mexbay could legally trademark this name :) and give them legal rights and ammo if it ever ends up in litigation.

Ever since ebay terminated the "adult" auctions, it's never been the same :dgrin:

Originally posted by Kiwi
I wonder why they don't do anything against "TheBay" ( http://www.hudsonsbay.com/ ) :rolleyes:

Because The Hudson's Bay Company has been around since like 1867 or earlier. ;)

Also, to whoever wondered, The Bay has always been around but it was Eatons who was bought out by Sears.

Not that Hudson Bay will or could get sued, but age doesn't matter. Say you had a web site called www.ebayauction.com since 1992. eBay could come right along and take you down. (ebay was started in 1995 I think)

Originally posted by Scott

Ever since ebay terminated the "adult" auctions, it's never been the same :dgrin:
They did?

http://pages.ebay.com/catindex/everythingelse.html

Maybe they just renamed it to Mature Audiences.

what company is older ebay.com? or EastBay?

I remember ordeing a Warrick Dunn Jersey from Eastbay.com a while back.

Thanks for the "heads up" MasterMindz, it's been quite awhile since visiting ebay.

Eastbay is older, founded in January 1980
Domain registered :April 17, 1995

Ebay was founded in September 1995
Domain registered : 04-Aug-1995

So let's see them go after an older company that has had its domain name longer.

Got news for ebay, they've got no legitimate claim to mexbay.com. The names aren't even close. There is no trademark infringement. Perhaps ebay's legal dorks need to bone up on both trademark law and the Lexis-Nexis case.

Lexis-Nexis fought against the Lexus car company because they felt Lexus was too similar to their Lexis trademark. They lost because the products are very different (car vs legal research) and because the spelling is different. Lexis-Nexis has been around much longer than the Lexus cars.

Lexus is certainly closer to Lexis than mexbay is to ebay. Sounds to me like this ebay legal rep sleep through her trademark law class. But then someone had to be below average.

eBay has no room to cry :bawling:

They don't even have a phone number...that's just sad... :rolleyes:

I'm pretty sure that trademarks only apply in the field the company works in and does not have any jurisdiction outside that area.

Take Windows(tm) for example. No software company in the world could ever made a software called Windows since MS would sue their butts.

However, Widowscrafers.com (example), could trademark the name Windows also but under their trade, windows/glass making.

Know what i mean, unless mexbay.com will be an auction site they have nothing to worry about.