So what's the final deal with this?

If you contacted the sponsors in advance and they told you to go ahead and buy the domain as long as you used it solely to promote their sites, you can keep the domain?

Tawnee is a little hottie, GORGEOUS smile :thumbsup

Just a shame every weeks update has the same poses just in different outfits

This is correct...it happened to Intel some years ago.
Sorry Intel did not loose a Trademark... They lost a copyright.

Looks like I got my answer.

Gotta love a sponsor who okays the use of domains in advance then sicks their lawyers on you, calls you a squatter, and tells you that you're trampling on their goodwill. LOL

I dont really see the problem
i opened up www.tawneestone-club.com

i was planning on building a new sort of avs on it
with sponsor content of lightspeedcash

Lightspeed has let me now he dont like it at all

But when i do a checkup on trademarks:

Typed Drawing

Word Mark TAWNEE STONE
Goods and Services IC 041. US 100 101 107. G & S: Entertainment services, namely, providing adult-oriented entertainment and information via global computer network; production and distribution of multimedia adult-oriented entertainment including text, images, video, and motion pictures. FIRST USE: 20010201. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20010201
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Serial Number 78138278
Filing Date June 24, 2002
Owner (APPLICANT) Lightspeed Media Corporation CORPORATION WASHINGTON 20229 North 67th Avenue, Suite C-4 Glendale ARIZONA 853086665
Attorney of Record David J. James, Jr.
Type of Mark SERVICE MARK
Register PRINCIPAL
Live/Dead Indicator LIVE


Registration Number: (NOT AVAILABLE)

Mark (words only): TAWNEE STONE

Current Status: A non-final action has been mailed. This is a letter from the examining attorney requesting additional information and/or making an initial refusal. However, no final determination as to the registrability of the mark has been made.

2002-11-14 - Non-final action mailed

2002-11-06 - Case file assigned to examining attorney


So i dont see the problem yet

if i'm really not allowed to i will not open it up
but if i am.....

why not.

107320 tawnee stone
24071 tawnee
4466 free tawnee stone
4272 tawnee stone pic
3575 free tawnee stone pic
3250 tawnee stone hardcore
2849 tawnee stone video
2752 tawnee stone movie
1553 tawnee stone picture
1390 tawnee stone nude
1358 tawnee stone gallery
1074 tawnee stone password
986 tawnee stone free video
928 free tawnee stone movie
893 free tawnee stone picture
844 tawnee stone fucking
701 tawnee stone sex
628 free stone stone tawnee tawnee
610 stone.com tawnee
573 tawnee stone shrine
568 tawnee stone mpeg
547 rachel tawnee


Am I guessing they have relized they can take the top spots for all those words if they do it themselfs like Playboy do, they get a lot of searches why the hell should they give them to affliates trying to get super high on the search engines when they can have those top spots for free.

Damn a lot of people must of seen her website to be typing that many search engine words in.

Sammy

Damn and a straight up $34.95 charge, or $6 trial. I guess if you have a 19 year old that looks 16 yrs then its gonna sell.

Sammy

"A trademark MUST HAVE "Source-Indicating Significance." Thus, the mark must be "perceived by potential purchasers to indicate source and not as merely an informational indication of the domain name address used to access a web site." See In re Eilberg, 49 USPQ2d 1955 (TTAB 1998)."

Hes not claiming to be lightspeed OR tawnee stone. If it went to court I'd doubt you'd take his domain. (not that I'd ever expect this weak annoying attack on somone obviously not harming your business would EVER make it to court)

I've got a pet peeve, but I don't have the evidence to say whether Lightspeed has triggered it.

The pet peeve scenario is this: Lawyers take an aggressive view of the law. They tell their clients "If we send a hundred really aggressive demand letters to people we could probably screw in court, we'll get eighty of those people to do what we want without litigation. Then we'll pick the best case out of the remaining twenty and screw him in court, so that folks will know that they have to do what our demand letters say the next time we run this scam."

Generally when lawyers do that, about half the letters have some merit, and about half of those could result in winnable cases. So the lawyers wind up "winning" 81 cases, out of 100 cases where they probably had only 25 real solid winners.

I *hate* this. It's dishonest and a form of extortion, as it affects the fifty folks against whom there was no good case but who could not afford to fight, or to take the chance of being picked as the designated screwee.

The problem is, generally the lawyers don't admit even to the client that half the cases are bogus, or non-winnable. So the businesses who authorize this think they are going after legitimate claims only.

As a legal tactic, it's effective as hell, which is why a certain sort of lawyer loves it. But as a business tactic, it's really really really short-sighted. When you inadvertantly create fifty extortion victims in this internet age, a few of them are going to turn out to have the communications and marketing skills to make you look really bad. For a high-class porn business with a really cool reputation to suddenly come off as a bully -- and a pointless bully, at that, since there are friendlier ways of achieving the underlying legitimate business and legal goals -- well, that can't be good for long term business.

Second disclaimer: There's no data that Lightspeed is doing this. It's possible their lawyers identified 200 cases, and sent letters only to the fifty sure winners. We'll probably never know. But if I was the keeper of the Lightspeed business rep, I'd be concerned about how this looks.

Since I posted eons ago, and put my foot in my mouth I'll reply now that it was bumped.

Note steve's previous comment in the thread. This is 100% fair in my book. I don't mind them "owning" the domain so long as they don't steal the hard work of affiliates.

Why? Because if they do not take action, they will lose any rights they had to the mark in the first place. Such is law. Strange eh?

So, this was well overblown and nearly everyone (including myself) overeacted.

-Phil