--- Date: Sat, 04 Jan 2003 23:26:18 -0700 To: "Declan McCullagh"<declanat_private> From: Charlie Oriez <coriezat_private> Subject: Lanham Act and political campaigns Cc: k.swearingenat_private Declan - Back in Feb, 2002, you covered a fight in Texas where the Texas Dems registered a parody site criticizing the ties between the Texas Republican Party and Enron, and the attempt of the Republicans to get the site taken down or modified on Lanham act grounds. The Dems ultimately won since the site was fairly obviously protected parody. http://www.politechbot.com/p-03144.html A candidate in Colorado has taken a different tact, registering likely domain names of his opponents with the sole intent of preventing their use. He's stated his intention to keep the sites blank and merely deny there use to the opponents whose names are in the domain names. The Anti Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999 (signed by Clinton in November of that year) expanded the Lanham Act to cover bad faith registrations of domain names so as to intentionally deny their use to trademark owners or owners of personal names. Story here: http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_1650692,00.html The wiggle room is the language of the act that says that the squatter has to intend to profit from the act. My tendency is to interpret that as the cybersquatter is intending to sell back the domain to the rightful owners. However, since the person who wins this election gets paid for the position at risk, at least one political operative raised the possibility that the post election payments might be sufficient to trigger Lanham. Penalties are $100,000 per violation. From the political perspective, if I were an opponent, I would spend the spring accusing the candidate of the Lanham Act violations and hammering on this action as symptomatic of his lack of ethics. The candidates are running for City Auditor, and the voters at least would want the person holding this office to be purer than Ceaser's wife. News reporter: sanchezr@rockymountain news.com or (303) 892-2231 I've been unable to reach any of the candidates though I've taken the liberty of cc'ing the admin contact for Debbie Ortega, one of the victims of the Lanham violations, on this note. I also alerted the reporter to my perceptions of the Lanham act's involvement. Charles Oriez coriezat_private 39 34' 34.4"N / 105 00' 06.3"W ** The internet views censorship as damage and routes around it -- attributed to John Gilmore Opt out of QWEST sharing marketing data on you http://www.qwest.com/cpni/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ Recent CNET News.com articles: http://news.search.com/search?q=declan -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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