Re:A Conference Stole My Identity
by dreamfactory2 on Thursday July 24, 2014 @12:06PM
(#8080338)
Actually they can try to trademark the term and then make a play for the domain and twitter account. If he gets to keep the domain in the case that they have a trademark he can still be prohibited from actually using the name on the site or for email addresses (not a lawyer but I've seen this play out in court). To best thing for him to do is probably to trademark it himself which might work out a bit cheaper than contesting their trademark application. His first and ongoing use might trump their investment in the brand.
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No. The same wordmark, e.g. "ACME" may have hundreds of registered owners, each for a specific business activity: perhaps a company in Florida sells ACME burgers and a company in California runs an ACME carwash. These companies do not have any claim on the domain name unless somebody is misusing their trademark by pretending to be them or trading off their name while performing the same business activity.
A registered trademark should not prevent somebody from continuing a usage which they were engaged in first, before the trademark was registered. If the business activities overlap then the registration itself should be rejected, if not it is likely to be invalid and can be challenged.
I don't believe that the business activities of is guy and the developer conference are sufficiently similar, I doubt he has any recourse, nor should he have expected any.
Re:A Conference Stole My Identity
by dreamfactory2 on Thursday July 24, 2014 @02:20PM
(#8081261)
He doesn't need to be actively passing off. They just need to demonstrate confusion in the mind of the consumer, which he has already conveniently done for them here.
You do raise the very relevant point that tlds don't equate to trademark categories and that in a more just world domains should therefore be out of reach until the laws catch up with this.
Re:A Conference Stole My Identity
by lukeschlather on Thursday July 24, 2014 @12:55PM
(#8080692)
They would fail. He's clearly used it has his personal trademark as a professional for years before they came along.
A personal trademark has only limited protections if it is not registered. It is also not clear that he wanted trademark protections to apply, since he did not seem to use the (TM) symbol that is allowed prior to registration. He could challenge an attempt at a trademark application, but the other FutureStack might have a good case given how many people confused his account for the conference.