back to article EU court: No, expat Frenchman can't trademark France.com

An EU court has tried to forestall ongoing US legal proceedings by declaring that an expat Frenchman can’t trademark a logo containing the domain name France.com. The EU General Court, a division of the EU Court of Justice, ruled today that Jean-Noel Frydman’s company France.com Inc was not entitled to register the domain name …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    expropriate

    Skank works betterer.

  2. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

    Don't...

    ...upset The Man....!

    (Ne pas déranger l'homme, for our French cousins...)

    1. Notas Badoff

      Re: Don't...

      Nor a tourism agency "with an army and navy."

  3. find users who cut cat tail

    Amazon

    Well, that's nice, but when will Amazon-not-the-world's-largest-river get its comeuppance?

    I also wish fruits, openings in walls and sets of letters could sue corporations...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Amazon

      I don't remember a corporation called glory hole though I may be mistaken.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Amazon

        Don't give El Reg's writers any ideas about new pseudonyms for Microsoft's products, or the front page might become NSFW!

      2. Bavaria Blu
        Happy

        Re: Amazon

        Gap?

  4. Hollerithevo

    anglican.

    Soem American bought (from memory) anglican.com or anglican.org way back in the 1990s. The Church of England had to work with him (through gritted teeth), as he would not give it up. He wasn't earned big bucks off the church, but he was clearly enjoying yanking their chain. Yes, they should have had the wisdom to grab the word, but this was the 1990s.

    1. Aladdin Sane

      Re: anglican.

      If only they had access to an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent being.

      1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

        Re: anglican.

        Or a .god TLD?

  5. Steve 114

    Good show

    I have a .net and .org domain. Some registrar gave me free ditto.com for 6 months (without telling me) and now wants to charge me for rescuing me from pirates imitating .com. Every such 'offer' has 'return address not monitored'. Scammers-all.

  6. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    Nope, it is not

    The practical effect of today’s judgment appears to be the destruction of Frydman’s intellectual property

    That part is not. You cannot trade mark the name of a country, its flag or other state symbols or a trivial modification of them. This is part of pretty much all copyright legislation since the dawn of copyright law.

    That cuts both ways - the state has absolutely no inherent right to the domain either.

    1. Aladdin Sane

      Re: Nope, it is not

      He's not trademarking France, he's trademarking france.com, which is quite different.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Nope, it is not

        A common misconception for people with no trademark knowledge whatsoever: what matters is not the differences, but similarities. So when your name wholly contains an existing trademark, of course it violates it.

        Eg, you can't trademark google.safdsjnjknbrtfdglkmyu. Even if you continue randomly typing for a looooong time, to have a loooooot of difference, it won't matter one bit.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Nope, it is not

      Take good not of what precisely what said: what's trademarked here is the logo, not the name of the country.

  7. JeevesMkII

    Presumably, as a corporate entity...

    France dot com Inc. has a better right to any dot com address than any government. That's what the dot com TLD is supposed to be for.

    If France wants a tourism site they can have france.fr or tourism.fr or whatever they want under their own country code, since they ultimately own the whole namespace.

    This is pure theft by a bunch of corrupt politicians and judges for no better reason trying to rig the google ranking game for their own tedious little state tourism department website.

    1. ds6 Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Presumably, as a corporate entity...

      Everything was peaches and hearts before Freidmann started ranking higher than them on Alexa. I guess what we can take from this is avoid angering state-level actors unless you have a badass [EU] legal team.

    2. jmch Silver badge

      Re: Presumably, as a corporate entity...

      "This is pure theft..."

      Taking over the domain (which seems to have happened in 2015 already) is, I agree, theft.

      Saying that he can't trademark "France.com" (which is what this article is about) is, I believe, a reasonable ruling.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Presumably, as a corporate entity...

      "That's what the dot com TLD is supposed to be for."

      And if it were limited and reachable exclusively from US jurisdictions, that what it would be. As it is, it has a global reach.

  8. Andy 97

    I suspect the owners of http://germany.com/ and http://italy.com will have similar problems quite soon.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    To Gareth Corfield

    The article forgets that the guy brought the attention of the state not when he got more hits on his website, but when he sued another company which was also trying to trademark the same name to get control of the name.

    And "a Paris court’s judgment that (quelle surprise) ruled in their favour". Seriously? You mean that the French judiciary is at the boot and heel of the French executive? And that they never, ever, rule in favour of foreign companies? I'm fine with a good joke, but come on, far too many readers take that in the first degree.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like