Michelin Guides forgets to renew domain name, becomes "Michel in Guides" | Hacker News Reader

Michelin Guides forgets to renew domain name, becomes "Michel in Guides"

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63 pointsdanso39 comments

I got my full name in .co.uk from a similar mishap (there's a large car dealership in the UK called Peter Cooper, curiously). Bizarrely they never came after me or even got in touch and bought a new domain instead, though it'd have been a harder case to fight given it's my actual name.

I always just assumed you split your time between writing and running a Volkswagen dealership in Southampton.

http://www.petercoopergroup.co.uk/

Are you aware that I also own an entire village in NYC? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_Town%E2%80%94Peter_C...

Reminds me of the case over http://nissan.com/

You know if Nissan Motors didn't exist there would not be a gigantic advertisement on the front page.

In the Archive WaybackMachine (http://web.archive.org/web/*/michelinguides.com ) most of the previous captures look like parked domains, except one (Feb 2012) that is in Chinese and the autotranslation say that it is some kind of "micro bloging site". (Whatever that means, I still don't understand it.)

So this domain probably was never an official site of Michelin as reported in the article.

(Official site: http://www.michelintravel.com/ )

I believe companies usually claim back 'stolen' domains with trademark claims. I wonder if the his claim that it's "Michel in Guides" will do anything to hold this claim at bay.

This didn't work for Pana Vision, a cybersquatter that displayed photos of Pana, IL on panavision.com. Panavision (the company) ended up with the domain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticybersquatting_Consumer_Pro...

It must be hard to make the case that the domain was stolen, since they simply allowed it return to the market place where it was legally bought by somebody else.

In the UK a trademark is only valid for a nominated category, so two different companies can legitimately have the same trademark if used for different purposes, but I don't know how the rules works in France.

Yup, WIPO has a arbitration system that should theoretically allow them to get their domain back.

It isn't really "their" domain. They not only failed to renew it, but they also failed to contest it when it was in suspended status.

They have at least 14 days to save "their" domain and then it entered the general pool and became someone else's domain entirely.

If I'm not mistaken, the prevailing precedent here is found in Lamparello v. Falwell ( 420 F.3d 309 4th Cir. 2005 )

"On appeal in 2005, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed the earlier decisions, ruling that there was not a "likelihood of confusion" between Lamparello's and Falwell's official site; that there was no trademark infringement based on "initial interest confusion" for sites that were non-commercial and critical of the trademark holder; and since Lamparello's site was non-commercial, there was no "bad faith intent to profit" and it was not cybersquatting."[1]

Im not sure Michelin Guides has standing in this case, at least not under trademark law...

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamparello_v._Falwell

Not always, and not quickly. See http://nissan.com/ for an example that's been dragging on for around 10 years or so. He's not squatting on nissan.com per se, but in my opinion is fairly close to it. It's a David vs. Goliath situation that's for sure, I'm amazed he's managed to keep the domain.

> He's not squatting on nissan.com per se, but in my opinion is fairly close to it

That doesn't make sense.

Sounds like you, and several other people, think that anyone who is under-utilising a domain is automatically "squatting." That the biggest user of a property is entitled to it...

He runs a business, the business is called "Nissan Computer(s)." That to me is the furthest thing from squatting...

I disagree & believe it does.

Where is he advertising the business on that web site? I see it mentioned in the header but that's not even a link. Instead he's running adds for insurance on it.

In my mind it comes down to what visitors of the website expect to see. I believe that the only possible expectation for someone visiting nissan.com is to see Nissan Motors. (At least in North America, I'm aware that Nissan is a popular name etc)

I'm not saying that he's even a bad guy here. If I was in his shoes I'm sure I'd feel exactly the same, he had the name first, even before Nissan Motors existed. But, times change. Leaving aside the legal questions, I believe that there would be less confusion caused if nissan.com pointed to Nissan Motors, therefore it would be in this case a social good thing to have it be so.

That's a personal opinion (and you're entitled to it) but the fact is he has a legitimate claim to the name and that's all he needs. If Nissan Motors wants it badly enough, they will convince him with money.

Until then, I (and the law) fully support his right to the domain.

I agree it's not a legal issue. The law is pretty firmly on his side, as it should be. I believe that things of this nature are too fuzzy to be encoded in law, it's more of a "I know it when I see it" type of thing that reasonable people can have differing opinions on.

However, a really stupid part of domain law is that Nissan Motor's can't convince him with money. If he had offered to sell to Nissan Motors or attempted to negotiate a price in response to an offer by them, that could be considered evidence of squatting and he could have lost the domain in court. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticybersquatting_Consumer_Pro...

Why do you think he is "close" to squatting? He registered a 'nissan' company in 1991, and registered the domain in 1994.

Just because a 'big' company missed out - its not his fault.

Because he's not using it primarily for his computer company any longer. Instead he's running ads for insurance and talking about the lawsuit.

I'm not saying he's a bad guy. Instead, I believe that the domain would serve a better purpose if it pointed to something that met the expectations of people who blindly type nissan.com into their web browser looking for an auto. Which in my case is exactly how I found out about it.

Nissan are a domain name oddity. They also own z.com but don’t point it at a web server.

   $ whois z.com
   Domain Name: Z.COM
   Name Server: NVS001.NISSAN.NE.JP
   Name Server: NVS002.NISSAN.NE.JP
   Name Server: SJ000030.NISSAN.CO.JP

They made a stupid mistake, they should not be allowed to get it back.

That's maybe going too far. Clearly this is a prank. The current owner has the right (abstractly -- honestly I have no idea how this works in French law) to express their opinion as parody, and Michelin shouldn't be able to use the trademark as a cudgel to suppress that.

That said, the proper remedy here is for them to buy back the domain name at a fair market price (whatever that may be, again I have no idea). The owner shouldn't be able to "ransom" the name for an unfair price, either.

It's his. He can do with it what he pleases.

If he wants to keep it, it should be his prerogative. If he wants to say "I'm happy to keep it, unless you happen to have half a million Euros lying around" he should be able to do that as well.

In the end, FMP is determined by what anyone is willing to pay.

Why not? It was their mistake, they forgot to renew a domain (something even I keep on top of). The guy bought it legally and is now hosting his own website.

I don't see how the company would have any right to get that domain back if the guy doesn't want to sell it. Then again, IANAL.

That's not how trademark law works, and in this case, for good reason http://www.chillingeffects.org/domain/faq.cgi#QID245

Fucking with a guy who thought MikeRoweSoft was funny? Probably not cool. Losing out on MichelinGuides for a dude who set up a prank? Eh, I'm siding with Michelin in this case.

I don't see how he's infringing on their copyright with the site he currently has set up. It's not like he's masquerading as the real deal and tricking people into donating or whatever.

I don't see why this guy should have to give up his legally obtained domain because some company failed to do their job. If he's smart, he'll skip court and settle for a lot of money/perks.

> The owner shouldn't be able to "ransom" the name for an unfair price, either.

Why? It is his property, he can do what he wants with it.

I'd be a lot more sympathetic if the domain was actively used and somehow a clerical error made them lose it. However, according to gus_massa in another comment, this was always just a parked domain.

Why should someone return (or sell back at a "fair" price) a domain they legally bought, just to have it fall back into disuse?

> The owner shouldn't be able to "ransom" the name for an unfair price, either.

Since there is a supply of n=1, please define what an "unfair" price is, if you're not comfortable with defining it as the amount that Michelin is willing to pay.

I can't tell if this is a joke or not. You don't think exploiting a monopoly position on a good whose value is defined by someone else's trademark is "unfair"? It's the very definition of unfair, sorry. The real world, and the law, recognize that. I'm disturbed that you don't.

The prank is acceptable. The ransom is not.

Reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._MikeRoweSoft

A company I used to work for had many clients (over 6000) and many would forget to re-register their domains. About one or two out of these clients a year would have the misfortune of a squatter swooping in and trying to extort them.

One client even had the misfortune of their domain redirected to a porn site when cash demands weren't met.

Genius.

Moral of the story: Auto renew FTW.

How does that even happen? My domains get renewed automatically.

Many domain registrars design their systems in such a way so that you either pay a higher price if you auto-renew (e.g. GoDaddy) or so that it is easy for auto-renew to switch off (e.g. CC expired) so they can charge you a "fee" to recover it once you realise it has been suspended.

Frankly it is in registrar's best interests to let your domain expire. You'll still pay them the renew fee either way, but additional fees loaded on top of that too.

There was a story on here the other day which basically revolved around people removing their credit card details immediately after purchasing domains, to prevent auto-renewals - they managed to mishandle removing their details, and deleted the domain involved.

Some people are odd!

You're mis-remembering that story.

GoDaddy (their registrar) charges more for auto-renew than for manual renew. So people wishing to save money disable auto-renew for that registrar.

GoDaddy's interface is really bad, and somehow when you remove your CC information it also asks you if you want to remove the domains entirely too (default: yes).

People click through without paying attention (thinking "it is just my payment info, what can go wrong?!") and BOOM their domains are gone.

Naturally GoDaddy charges a fee to restore the domains...

Oops indeed!

This reminds me of a guy in a game, his nickname was "Penisland". Pen Island.

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