Girls Gone Wild trying to strongarm me
 

I have two domains in which i run free sites..

http://www.mardigrasgonewild.com
http://www.springbreakgonewild.com

Girls Gone Wild lawyers are trying to stronarm me into giving them my domains (for free) because they claim it's too similar to their company and what it offers. Any ideas on the legalities of this situation. Personally, I'm about to tell them to fuck off. :321GFY

You don't have to give them your domains
but they may have a case against you if you offer
similiar stuff with a similiar name.

Not sure, but I think thats the case if they own
Trademarks and Copyrights on these terms.

autoshack had to change their name to autozone after radioshack strongarmed them :-(

If they take you to court you'll loose, try to work something out with them. You might have to start promoting their affiliate program, but it's better than loosing your traffic. They have an affiliate program for their website, right?

did you get your domains first? sue them back and tell them to give you girlsgonewild domain for free. or $19.99 plus shipping and handling.

If you registered the domains before Girls gone wild began to market their stuff you will most likely being able to keep them. If you registered them after they got famous you might loose them and rightfully so.

The whois database show you registered those domains this year and that means you saw their name and thought that those are good domain names but that also means you took their trademark and placed it in those domains. This simply is an infrigement of trademark and you should just hand them over.

Guys with Trademarks always win.

;)

J.R. is correct..

It's the similarity of the products that create the problem with those domain names. You don't have to trun the names over to them, but you'd need to remove any similar products.. This causes consumer confusion which gives them the upper hand..

This might help to explain things..

Protect your rights and Fight Fight Fight! You need to explain the details for anyone here to really asses this situation.

However I will tell you I had a domain that was the exact name of an extremely big site. How they never registered it is beyond me, but I happened to be registering domains one day and typed it in and I saw it was available. I checked again on several other whois databases and it was showing available. I kept saying to myself no way could this be true. Then figured wtf and registered it.

Wanting to be fair, I called them up and said I had a domain name that matched one of their big sites and if they would be interested in buying it for just a small amount of consideration. Keep in mind this was when adult was just getting rolling on the Net and a lot of legal precedents hadn't yet been laid in place. They said sure for $0 dollars and started right away with the threats that it was their trademark, they would sue me for it, etc. I got really pissed off the way they got instantly dicky, and I said hey even though you have a site with this name, its a big name thats been used in this business long before the Net came about and they should have registered if they felt it was theirs.

A few weeks later, I get a threat letter from their attorneys saying this and that ,ad they said it was a federally registered trademark and they wanted the domain transferred for free from me. I did my homework and found out they were bullshitting and hadn't registered anything related to this name. I laced the attorney royally for bs'ing me and told them for being such dickoff's I wouldn't sale at any price and said go ahead and sue and I'll see you in court.

Long story short, they couldn't do shit, because it did have prior use in the industry, they hadn't registered it officially with the USPTO, and I did eventually sell it for some very nice $ though to a competitor.

So if you have a valid case stand up and fight if you don't don't waste your time and cut a deal.

You tried to Cyber squat, whether you admit it or not.

had you just went along with your business nothing would have happened until theycaught the domain.

Contacting and asking for money is the fucked up thing to do.

Thats how they win.

;)

There was another big scene a few years back with a lot of webmasters being threatened by the scammy guy who had usurped sex.com from Gary for several years until Gary won it back in court. This guy after thieving Sex.com through fraud, then went about threatening the webmasters that had the word sex in their domains. So if you had a domain like HotSex.com, this guy wanted you to turn it over to him saying you were infringing on his thieved Sex.com. Man were there some webmaster board battle posts back then. It was a total trip to watch.

Luckily Gary won his domain back and a nice size judgment against that guy that was doing that to all the webmasters.

First, go look and see if they actually got approved for a trademark for their name. Not just applied for it.

Here is my experience
I got some papers saying to turn the name over immediately,
give up any money ever made on it, so on...

I stood up for the name I got, becasue I could prove, I bought it
without the intention of making money off thier established business. Also, they have a very hard time with words listed in the dictionary...
Long story short, minus many threats and "official papers"
They actually paid me a good chunk of change for it...

But remember there is NO exact answer anyone can tell you,
every situation is different...

Fletch, no it was a very common term in the adult industry long before this company started using it. They just had a site with this name that grew into a biggie, but they had never registered a domain for the full name. They were feeding the traffic to it from another domain they had. And apparently no one had the smarts to go and reg it once it was big on its own.

But that is why they couldn't claim cybersquatting because I sent their attorney a load of clear examples of its use in the industry in print by several major video companies years before they started using it on one of their sites.

Cybersquatter.....

I would say your best bet is to see if they have an affil program, signup and send your traffic to them. They shouldnt have a problem with that since they still make money off it.

Go to your local law school legal aid or do a google search and find a prof. who specializes on "cyber law" or trademark/patent work.

Call them up and explain your situation.
See what they advise.

I would also ask for all the information from the GGW legal team, and some formal paperwork so you can look it over with your attorney.

Then submit a counter offer.

But, if they start huffing and puffing, I'd give them up.
It is not worth it to fight someone with more money.

Even if you win, you lose.

Fletch my case would be like someone going out right now and registering SUV.com, assuming it was available.

And then having an auto company like Ford writing me and saying they sell SUV's and I'm now infringing on their brand trademark for FordExplorer.com by owning SUV.com and that since FordExplorer is an SUV I should just give them SUV.com.

That's like what my situation was. It was a generic theme term that had lots of prior use. It was the theme of this adult site that got very big and then this adult company saying this theme name is there's now. When lots of companys had prior use and even today it is used widely all over the place.

I understand cybersquatting and my case was not that at all.

CyberSquatting in its simplest form is contacting Anyone for Anyreason and because they have a business or tangible existence virtual or physical - you try to get money from them in purchasing the domain.

I'm am sure your experience was unique, but contacing was the error.

I won't debate this.

cybersquatting definition from webopedia:



I think the keywords are "rightful owner," which is not always the clear case.

To clarify it, my deal was like if I saw webcams.com was available. And there was a big site using the name "WebCams" for their name of their site but having built it up from traffic from web.com.

Then them saying since they owned web.com and had a site using the term WebCams that now my just registered site WebCams.com should be theirs since they had already half of it as Web.com and were using an extrapolation of it as the name of a site but not the domain of that site.

Fuck, whatever. I think you get the point.

tell ggw to worry about their 3,000+ FTC complaints and stfu

:321GFY

on the note of 'gone wild' u may have some sticky ground there becuz if it was 'wild' like wildteens and wildblah was suin that'd be a tuff call, but GONE WILD may tip it in their favor

anyhow theyre some of the biggest ripoff artists on the planet, dont cave in

tell them the domains make u 45k a year and they can have them both for an up-front payment of 1 year's income, one of my friends said that to AOL and they actually asked him to explain further lol!

:winkwink:

Hmm. I wonder if they'd be interested in LawyersGoneWild.com?

He said he was surprised it was available, why again?

:smokin

I hate those motherless fucks. I can't wait till some of these people start winning lawsuits against them. They are some real fucking scumbags.

Change your domains to a EU contact and tell them to GFY.


On another note,

I was the first to offer porn on the net and now look at everyone violating my rights/trademarks. I was the first to do it and now everyone is.. guess that means no one else is alot to do it.

The above lines were a joke, but seriously your not violating any trademarks by having those domains.. If you went out and registered girlsgonewild.com you might have a real problem on your hands

point them in the direction of Girls Gone Crazy!
They have the attorneys to put up a more intresting fight.

Dude, other than that ignore em like I ignore the IRS.

If they want what you got, let them show up on your doorstep and try to take it.

Fuck em.

Arm yourself and protect your family.
If they want it go to war with em.

pornjester - let me give you the best advice you will hear in this thread: Talk to a lawyer.

w3rd.

:smokin

Can I Trademark GoFuckYourself?

PornJester... please hit me up on icq (67567305), I have a question for you about the Girls Gone Wild Lawyers (they're fucking with me right now too).

I'd wipe my ass with their letters and send them back .

goto and overture

or, you could offer to give them another domain. oh, i don't know, maybe something like

faggotlawyersgonewild.com

i wouldn't fuck with the girlsgonewild people....they will send Snoop Dogg to your house and make you show your tits!

Before telling them off (I would too), let's talk about volume. Check how much traffic and money your making from these domains versus the cost of even talking to a lawyer. If your making just a little cash from the domains, tell them they can have the domains but they'll need to pay the costs for transferring. Even though they say they won't, they will. They're not going to sue over a small fee and they'll absorb it. If a majority of your signups are coming from these domains, then talk to a lawyer.

WG

I still laugh when I see so called webmasters jump on that 'transfer it offshore' BS. What part of US Citizen don't they grasp??!?!

the moral of the story is big bank takes little bank

and i am sure girls gone wild have big pockets

Hmmm, They dont seem to be messing with Six Nine (http://blackgirlsgonewild.com/) ask him whats his secret, he may have dealt with this issue already.

haha... I'm not surprised. You see the size of that m'fka?

Simple.

He's not doing the Mardi Gras 'Party Girl Flashing' type of site. Its just Hot Black Girls, no beads or drinks.

;)

Just cause they have more money does not mean you should cave in like has been suggested.

The reason they have offshore corps. is exactly for situations like this. The harder you make it to sue the less you'll be sued. End of story. For example in one of the countries I have a corp., to file a lawsuit against a registered corporation there you have to post a $25,000.00 bond with your lawsuit to file it in the courts. That keeps frivolous suits well at bay.

Which reminds me, I have to get my site http://www.blackhotgirls.com back up
Thanx :thumbsup

It's gona come down to a very simple question of trademark infringement.

Did you copy them? If you TRULY didn't then fight it and tell them to goto hell but I suspect you did, and if you did you will (and should) loose.

Are you profiting on the good will they have established for their name/product? If your advetising is competing with them head to head in the same markets and they have trademark you're gona loose.

Ask yourself those question before you fight it. If you're guilty of both you'll just waste a lot of time and money fighting a loosing battle.

what country are you incorporated in ?

This guy hasn't lost his case yet and he's battling a heartless multinational corporation.
nissan.com

Quite the story, he used to have a link up on his site about Nissan's lawyers strong arming him. His last name is Nissan and he registered the domain when they were still Dauston.

Burtman

hey Jester.

I did a quick trademark search on 'gone wild'.

There are two companies in different fields that own the right to 'girls gone wild'. One in cosmetics and one in porn (Registration Date December 12, 2000
Owner (REGISTRANT) MRA HOLDING CORPORATION LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY CALIFORNIA 8899 BEVERLY BLVD. SUITE 810 BEVERLY HILLS CALIFORNIA 90048 ).

Then there are a ton of other 'gone wild' trademarks.

He also own the 'gone wild' trademark for the field : IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: Pre-recorded video tapes and DVD's, all featuring movies and television programs of all kinds


So if you have pre recorded video on a site that is called 'gone wild' you're breaching trademarks.

Nevis (St. Kitts & Nevis).

hurry and change it to a cosmetics site and tell them to fuck off. then later on change it back.

i dont think they have any trademark

http://www.nameprotect.com/cgi-bin/F...girl+gone+wild

Those sites look like you are trying to cash in on the Girls Go Wild brand name to me. That's illegal. I'd back down.

I can't believe how many of you guys think he's gotta roll over!

"Gone Wild" is far too common in linguistic use in this country to be trademarkable in that broad a manner. GIRLS Gone Wild I see them owning rights too of course.... but to say ANYTHING Gone Wild they can stop - no fucking way. Might as well have ESPN News sue anyone who has NEWS in the domain. This is just like when sex.com tried to go after everyone with sex in the domain name.

Doesn't fly. You want leads to an excellent law firm on this, let me know. I've seen this fight a few times.

The only thing - as pointed out by a few guys is you can't go ripping their whole pitch and idea as well. I'm speaking strictly of domain name use here.