statements made by the current owner<\/a> of the disputed domains, Ron Paul made a recent comment during an Alex Jones Show interview expressing regret over not owning RonPaul.com. That led to a number of listeners urging the domain owner to work out a deal. Apparently, that’s where things began to fall apart. The current domain owner accuses Ron Paul of ignoring his “respectful” offer of purchasing the domain (and associated mailing list of users) for a sum of $250,000 and resorting to filing the WIPO complaint instead.<\/p>\nThe official complaint filed by Ron Paul tells a slightly different story. First, it establishes Ron Paul as owner of the “RON PAUL” U.S. trademark, by virtue of its use with the sale of seven books he has authored (three of which made the New York Times<\/em> best seller list). Paul’s complaint proceeds to argue the current domain name holders haven’t used the domains in connection with any bona fide offering of goods or services, yet made excessively priced demands on its resale. In contradiction with the details posted on RonPaul.com by its owner, Ron Paul’s complaint notes one of his representatives, Chris Younce, inquired about purchasing the domain. Younce received a reply from a George R. stating, “Yes, it’s currently for sale at $848,000. This is for the domain name only and does not include the website or other content.”<\/p>\nOnly later was a second letter received offering the $250,000 price for the domain and mailing list, plus a “free gift” of the RonPaul.org domain thrown in. Ron Paul argues he had the domains appraised at an approximate value of $50,000 — far less than the “exorbitant” asking price.<\/p>\n
To prevail in such a dispute, a trademark owner has to show three things:<\/p>\n
\n- The trademark owner owns a trademark (registered or unregistered) that’s the same or confusingly similar to the registered second level domain name.<\/li>\n
- The party that registered the domain name has no legitimate right or interest in the domain name.<\/li>\n
- The domain name was registered and used in bad faith.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
It’s abundantly clear that the current domain holder registered the RonPaul.com and .org domains with every intention of referring to the man who is now filing the complaint asking for them, so item one is a given. And although it may come across as mean-spirited, I’m afraid it’s also completely in the legal right to claim the current party has no legitimate right or interest to Ron Paul’s name and trademark. (Just claiming one is a fan or a political supporter doesn’t grant one any automatic legal rights to a person’s name or intellectual property.) Item three might prove the most challenging to prove though. Ron Paul’s complaint portrays the domain owner as disingenuously selling Ron Paul merchandise made by third-party vendors, directly in competition with official Ron Paul goods, while maintaining his use of the domain is only for non-commercial purposes. That’s a strong argument to support the “bad faith” requirement.<\/p>\n
Of course, when politics comes into play, public opinion and appearances sometimes hold a greater importance than what’s in the legal wrong or right. This is where Ron Paul may lose by winning. If grassroots volunteers who invested many hours of their lives promoting his name and cause take this as an attack on their efforts, what price tag can be placed on the damage?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a move that’s difficult not to view as ironic, recently retired Congressman Ron Paul filed an international complaint with the WIPO on Friday, demanding the organization (an agency of the United Nations) turn over both the RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org domains from the current owners. Those current owners being Paul’s own supporters who have run […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[905,1920,730],"tags":[3926,3,2618,3925,2613,3928,3927],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16708"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16708"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16725,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16708\/revisions\/16725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}