Dear Keith:
I heard this morning on SiriusXM's POTUS blogcast that Tucker Carlson had purchased the KeithOlbermann.com domain name and redirected it to his own site, The Daily Caller. Sure enough, it's true (not gonna give a live link; why benefit Carlson?). As a cyberlaw professor, though, I was wondering whether you knew that you might be able to sue Carlson for up to $100,000 for his domain name swipe?
In 1999, after a number of cases where the courts tried to figure out how to deal with cybersquatting (taking of another party's domain name) under existing trademark law, Congress passed the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act ("ACPA"), which directly addressed the issue. In this law (section (d) of 15 USC 1125, which can be seen here), anyone who registers another party's domain name in "bad faith" can be sued in U.S. federal court. There are a few really interesting bits to the law. First, note just some of the possible indications of "bad faith" in (d)(1)(B):
(II) the extent to which the domain name consists of the legal name of the person
and
(V) the person’s intent to divert consumers from the mark owner’s online location to a site accessible under the domain name that could harm the goodwill represented by the mark, either for commercial gain or with the intent to tarnish or disparage the mark, by creating a likelihood of confusion as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of the site
and
(VII) the person’s provision of material and misleading false contact information when applying for the registration of the domain name, the person’s intentional failure to maintain accurate contact information, or the person’s prior conduct indicating a pattern of such conduct
Carlson's current site (remember to take screenshots, Keith!) sure seems to fit one or more of those definitions!
The other fun bit is in the remedies. Yes, you can get back the domain name, but take a look at this in the related remedy provision, 15 USC 1117(d):
(d) Statutory damages for violation of section 1125 (d)(1)
In a case involving a violation of section 1125 (d)(1) of this title, the plaintiff may elect, at any time before final judgment is rendered by the trial court, to recover, instead of actual damages and profits, an award of statutory damages in the amount of not less than $1,000 and not more than $100,000 per domain name, as the court considers just.
Wonder how many bow ties Carlson would have to sell to generate $100,000?
Of course, this isn't legal advice (and you can always get your domain name back for relatively low cost via the uniform domain name dispute policies published by ICANN). But $100,000 is such a...round number. Makes you want to count up instead of counting down, doesn't it?
Just sayin'. {ProfJonathan}