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Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of culture, technology, politics, and law. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.
--- Date: Sat, 05 Jan 2002 12:11:41 -0600 From: Ray Schafer <ray@theschafers.org> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> Subject: Reverse Cybersquating Declan, I thought that this would be of interest to you or your readers. Chip Rosenthal has an interesting fight on his hands. He has registered and has been using the domain name "UNICOM.COM" since 1990 - well before the World Wide Web even existed here. A California company - also doing business as Unicom - wants the domain name and attempting to commandeer it by alleging that Chip is engaging in Cybersquating. (In fact he is not - the domain name is not for sale). It wasn't until 1997 that the California firm registered a trademark of a Typed Drawing of "Unicom" (SN#75311390), Words in Stylized Form: "Unicom Systems, Inc. Corporation California" (SN#75311438) and a Typed Drawing of "Unicom Systems" (SN#75311386). They now want the domain name "UNICOM.COM" that Chip has been using. A legal battle is underway. Here is an excerpt from the Defendant's (Chip's) motion to dismiss: This case boils down to whether a little known corporation, which obtained a federal trademark registration long after Defendant began using his domain, can leverage the trademark by forcing Defendant to give up his domain name without regard to the facts or the law. - Defendant's Motion to Dismiss, pp. 7-8 Chip has the whole thing documented on his web site: http://save.unicom.com. Chip has been an active contributor to Usenet and as a programmer, has contributed as part of the development team to the popular Unix mailer, Elm. Ray Schafer ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------