Visa vs. evisa.com In Vegas 184
wessman writes "In October 2002, Visa (the credit card company) convinced a Las Vegas federal court to prevent the small business JSL Corp. from using the term 'evisa' and the domain 'evisa.com' for its website offering travel, foreign language, and other multilingual applications and services. The court ruled that the website--run by Joe Orr from his apartment-- 'diluted' Visa's trademark, even though the site uses the word 'visa' in its ordinary dictionary definition, not in relation to credit card services. Now, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is helping JSL with an appeal. The EFF has a press release available."
Other addresses at risk too (Score:4, Informative)
ivisa.com and myvisa.com
which are also registered on who-is
and where does it end?
bluevisa.com, redvisa.com...
Re: The AC is full of it here (Score:4, Informative)
They may have
On the E-Visa.com website, under Legal it lists their trademarks as:
The trademarks, logos, and service marks (collectively the "Trademarks") displayed on the Visa site are registered and unregistered Trademarks of Visa and others. VISA®, the Three Bands Design Mark®, CLASSIC®, the Comet Design Mark®, the Dove Design Mark®, ELECTRON®, ENTREE®, the Impulse Design Mark®, INTERLINK®, the Network Design Mark®, PLUS®, the PLUS Design Mark®, and It's Everywhere You Want To Be® are registered Trademarks of Visa in the United States and other countries
Re:That's absurd. (Score:4, Informative)
Visa and Mastercard are really two names for the same economic enterprise, i.e. a group of 6000 banks. Of these, the same 50 or so big banks own, govern and make all of the competitive decisions for the brands called Visa and Mastercard.
From PBS [pbs.org]
Visa and MasterCard are being sued by American Express and the DOJ for antitrust [americanexpress.com] and by a a group of retailers [lexisone.com] for antitrust related to debit cards.
Re:Well (Score:3, Informative)
Where does that leave us?
Ronny
Re:Well (Score:4, Informative)
Of course you can trademark dictionary words, or combinations of them.
Are you saying every company should make up some gibberish string of characters for every product or service they want to offer?
How would you like a alvnernmpal digelflorp?
A trademark only applies to the specific product or service, though. And it's only being violated if someone uses it for a similar product or service.
Trademarks are valuable not only to corporations, but to you. If you buy a Ford Explorer, you're getting a Ford Explorer. If I sold you a mo-ped and told you it was a Ford Explorer, I'd be guilty of fraud - because I misrepresented it as a trademarked good. If not for the trademark, I'd be innocent so long as there was a sticker on it saying 'Ford Explorer'.
In this case, if evisa offers credit, or some other financial services, they'd be fraudulently tricking people into thinking they're Visa.
But the name of the company doesnt matter. If you go to the website to apply for a credit card, you quickly realize that it's not the same company at all.
They aren't going to trick you into booking a vacation thinking that there's a gold card waiting in Tahiti for you.
No. (Score:3, Informative)
VISA has owned "evisa" in ic036 since august of that year. Why they didn't register evisa.com at the same time is beyond me, but in any event, they both have valid claims to the domain name, and JSL registered first.
Re:EFF is full of it here (Score:3, Informative)
acbay.net (Score:3, Informative)
Read the Court Document! (Score:5, Informative)
usadirect-online.com (USADirect is an AT&T trademark)
picturebookmaker.com (Picturebook is a SONY trademark)
Now usadirect.com is not an AT&T website and usadirect-online.com is no longer registered. The picturebookmaker.com was registered in 1995 so there's more to it but either this guy had a horrible attorney or the judge was asleep the day they explained those two domain names.
While this is a small business, it has a total of one employee... the owner. He also has two corporations. You incorporate in Delaware to keep corporation officers anonymous. You incorporate in Nevada to avoid paying income taxes. So what does this guy do? Incorporate two companies. He owns the Delaware one directly (anonymously) and the Delaware one owns the Nevada one. The Nevada one is the company that holds evisa.com and "operates" it.
Re:Other addresses at risk too (Score:3, Informative)
Except that:
1. JSL does business dealing with
2. JSL owned evisa.com since 1997. VISA applied for TM status in 1999.
EFF should not have taken the case (Score:5, Informative)
Also on page 10, "JSL stated on its Web site that it provides e-commerce, Web site development, and payment services, including online credit card processing. After Visa International filed this suit, JSL removed the reference to credit card processing".
On page 8, defendant says, "[f]or the right price, evisa.com might be available, but I'll have to check with a couple of people, one of whom is in Japan and one of whom is on vacation." He later admitted that this was a false statement because he did not have to check with anybody. He turned down an offer to sell the domain name for $50,000, instead demanding $250,000.
While I suspect the judge's ruling was based more on the fact that the defendant was a sleazy bastard rather than on the merits of the case, I don't think the EFF should have taken the case. My guess is, if the EFF helps him overturn the ruling, he will turn around and sell the site to Visa. He's just using the EFF to get free counsel for his profit venture.
Re:EFF should not have taken the case (Score:3, Informative)
JSL has registered a number of domains, all of which are under active development or will be. We have never sold a domain. The domain names above contain ENGLISH WORDS, NOT TRADEMARKS. Can you grasp this idea? Visa simply went and did a trademark search on every word in every domain JSL owns, and then feigned outrage, as if I chose those domains for their resale value. I mean, come on, look at picturebookmaker.com [picturebookmaker.com]. For that matter look at what used to be on evisa.com [3dtree.com]. Cybersquatters don't put up hundreds of pages of useful info - they just, well, squat.
But in any case, regardless of whether anyone wants to call me sleazy or not, the EFF is NOT INVOLVED in the cybersquatting complaint. JSL is on its own on the infringement and cybersquatting case (both of which are ridiculous, and we'll no doubt do fine w/o any help). The EFF is only trying to overturn this one ruling which could give VISA rights over the commercial use of domains and business names that contain the word v-i-s-a.
-Joe Orr
JSL
The Current Court Order and the Lawsuit (Score:2, Informative)
The first story is about VISA being involved in a classic reverse-cybersquatting action.
The second story is about the most recent ruling in the case, which involvesonly the "dilution" claim, and basically claims that EVISA "dilutes" VISA because "it contains the VISA mark in its entirety". (See the full Court Order on the eff.org site or on 3Dtree.com.) This ruling if left unchallenged could result in a considerable consolidation of Internet domains in the hands of holders of "famous" common-word marks. This is a separate issue from arbitrary coined words like "Kodak". Allowing "Kodak" to control
commercial use of the word "kodak" is obviously less problematic than allowing VISA to control commercial use of the word "visa". Or it should be obvious.
The EFF is NOT assisting JSL with the lawsuit as a whole. It is only assisting JSL in trying to get the most recent ruling overturned. As for the other charges in the lawsuit as a whole, the EFF is not involved, nor should it be, because: 1. The EFF has its hands full with the continuous assualt on cyber-rights so well chronicled on slashdot day after day, and 2. the fact that a huge corporation is using the courts to try to bankrupt a small company by issuing complaint after complaint, is not news, and in any case not an issue particular to the Internet.
Still, if the EFF was as powerful as, say, the NRA, VISA would never have even filed this suit. Anyone here not join yet?
I for one don't object to Visa defending their trademark. There is nothing per se wrong with a large company sueing a small one. If I'm hurting their mark, then I deserve to be punished, small or large. Not only that, the "dilution" claim is not on its face completely absurd and abusive. This is mainly because the Federal Antidilution Act is so difficult to interpret that even different federal judges have had major differences in interpretation. We believe that EVISA does not dilute VISA, and we'd like to be able to present the facts supporting this position in a trial. We think our position is the correct one. We disagree with the current ruling because it denies JSL the chance to present evidence at a trial, and because it gives VISA and other common word trademark holders broad powers not intended by Congress.
The other charges: cybersquatting and infringement are a blatant abuse of the court system. We have to defend ourselves, and VISA is making this as expensive as possible. They are also refusing to cooperate as much as they can. If VISA really believed they had any kind of case for cybersquatting they could have submitted the case to WIPO at any time for a quick and cheap resolution. However according to the rules, they would have clearly lost. So instead they literally decided to make a "federal case" out of it, 2 years after JSL started development of evisa.com, and 4 years after development of evisa-jp.com. In all of those years, Visa never sent a cease-and-desist letter or in any way complained about JSL's use of EVISA - because VISA was not in fact concerned about infringement. They're just after the domain. Their strategy was to get a registered mark for "EVISA" and then claim that we were infringing that. When we opposed their registration, they sued us within weeks.
As for playing by the same rules, Visa has subpoenaed me and others, but has refused to allow us to subpoena the person or persons most knowledgable on their side. They have demanded hundreds of documents from us, including virtually all business records and emails (which we provided), yet they have simply refused to provide virtually any important documents to us. They have not divulged one single email. Of course, we can then appeal to the judge to make them comply, but the judge then stayed discovery pending ruling on the summary judgement motions.
It would be nice if there was some way of preventing these kinds of tactics, since they give inordinate power to large entities at the expense of the law. But that would be another discussion.
-Joe Orr
JSL