and I am being instructed from the union General Counsel that the websites that I legally own is a trade mark infringement and to cease and desist from infringing on that name by discontinuing the three named websites. I hope this letter was sent to all other sites resembling the name “ATU757” such as http://www.atu757.com and many others or is it just me?
This is a perfect example of union officials attempting to prevent a union member from holding separate meetings. The Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) and The Union Members’ Bill of Rights might protect me if my Union decides to take action. Then again it might not.
8 comments:
Looks like your union needs a new attorney - preferably one who can actually READ the laws they cite.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticybersquatting_Consumer_Protection_Act#Overview_of_the_ACPA
"The ACPA does not prevent the fair use of trademarks or any use protected by the First Amendment, which includes gripe sites.[12] In Mayflower Transit, L.L.C. v. Prince, 314 F. Supp. 2d 362 (D.N.J 2004), the court found that the first two prongs of Mayflower's ACPA claim were easily met because (1) their registered trademark was distinctive and (2) Defendant’s “mayflowervanline.com” was confusingly similar to Plaintiff’s Mayflower trademark.[13] However, when the court was examining the third prong of Plaintiff’s ACPA claim, whether Defendant registered its domain name with the bad faith intent to profit from Plaintiff, the court found Defendant had a bona fide noncommercial use of the mark, therefore, the ACPA claimed failed.[14] “Defendant’s motive for registering the disputed domain names was to express his customer dissatisfaction through the medium of the Internet.”
In short - no profit (or plan to profit), then no violation of the ACPA. "Gripe sites" (see the Wikipedia entry) are specificually protected under the First Amendment, and this right supercedes any entity laying claim to any disputed domains so long as the registrant has only noncommercial intent.
In short - that attorney is wholly full of shit, and I'd either ignore them or invite them to proceed to spend member money to lose their case in court.
-jw
You are great, Thank you.
Most of the feed back I am getting about this is to stand strong and let our Union Officials stick their own foot in their mouth. I have no plans on removing the sites and I am working at improving them. It takes a lot of work to have a secure site and I am still working on the design and trying to figure out what will work best for our members.
Any and all feed back about what members would like to see on the info site is very welcomed and I will do my best to incorperate it into the site.
Thank you again.
Hmm... makes me wonder if whitehouse.com (i think it was) is still around.
I guess not. It was a porn site.
he he he.... so is ATU757.com
Not for long. If you don't buy it - I will, just to tweak your incompetent attorney's nose.
There you go.... Join in the fun
The joke is on me and your Local's idiot attorney. It's foreign registered and the owner wants $15K for it. I hope Counselor Doofus sent them a similar form letter, cause in their case, the law actually applies.
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