If you think the trademark laws are tough in the United States, you should check out the french laws.
If you visit Sedo’s home page for France, you will see on the bottom of the front page a judgment of a French court entered against Sedo for a total of 95,000 Euro’s for apparently just parking a domain its didn’t own.
The case involved the domain Euridile.fr, which the court found infringed on the trademark of EURIDILE owned by the National Institute of Intellectual Property (INPI).
On February 15, 2010 the Court of Appeals fined SEDO who was parking the domain, SafeNames.com which looks like they were the domain registrar, and a company named Lantec who was the domain owner.
According to the judgment the domain was used “in reference to pornographic websites”.
SafeNames was fined $5,000 for being the domain registrar.
Lantec, the domain holder and Sedo the parking company were fined jointly and severally for 50,000 Euros for “Fraud”
Sedo was then fined 30,000 Euro’s individually as “compensation for damage to the trademark holders image”
Sedo was then ordered to pay INPI costs of 15,000 Euro’s making the total a whopping 95,000 Euro’s or about $130K for Sedo.
Lantec, the domain owner was also fined another 15,000 Euro’s for Fraud individually.
The court then ordered each of the companies to “post the contents of this judgment in English. French and German on the home page they own for one month or face an additional fine of 150 euro’s per day until the judgment is posted.
This is why if you go to Sedo’s french site you will find the judgment on the bottom in several languages, lets call it Sedo’s Scarlet Letter.
Ouch.
The Court described the violation, not as trademark infringement, but as of Counterfeiting and Unfair Competition.
I personally don’t understand how the registrar got fined at all, and have no idea of why the parking company got fined more than the company that registered and owned the domain. While the 50,000 fine was jointly and several, meaning each are responsible for the whole, the individually leveled fines where 30,000 Euro’s in the case of Sedo but only 15,000 Euro’s for the domain owner.
This is not the first time Sedo has been held liable for damage by a French Court. Back in 2007 Sedo was fined in exceess of 100,000 Euro’s in a case involving Le Meridien Hotels and several domains that the court found violated its trademarks which were being parked by Sedo.
If the courts in France can hold companies liable for just parking domains or even worse, for just allowing someone to register a domain, as in Safenames, it’s going to be awfully expensive to do business there.
Something to think about but you jump into the .Fr market.
“Something to think about but you jump into the .Fr market.”
The pitfalls of buying a country code domain. When you buy a country code domain, you are buying into that country so you are buying into the laws (and penalties) of that country.
I want nothing to do with France for more reasons than just this.
It’s this simple. The French are and have always been total morons. They are just angry for losing every war they ever fought.
Drop in the bucket for all of the cybersquatters… Most of em aren’t even going to blink over this.
Wow, That’s pretty strict for a country that does’nt usually bother following too many rules. (it’s a great place for a holiday though)
I had a generic .com parked at sedo a while back and I seem to remember seeing something that said any french traffic would be shown a standard portal page, is that the same for all domains with french traffic that are parked at sedo ?
This is a good example of what I pray to people when wanting to do business in European country’s and specially messing with ccTLD’s ( IDN) which language they do not speak and laws they are not familiar with.
Europe is not just a expensive place to live, it can also whipe you out if you dont know what your doing.
The courts in France and Germany come down hard on individuals not playing by there (rules) laws.
.FR and specially .DE have restrictions which do not exist in the U.S (.com)
.DE Names of people! Any German can take the domain from you if it is there true name. That is if the registrant is not called by the same name.
.DE City’s / Geo names if registerd and caught?
1. Loose name
2. Minimum fine 5000 Euro + court expences.
3. If caught twice fine can go up to 250 000 Euro
Geo rules apply to .com , .net and all other TLD’s if you are a resident of Germany.
Different countries different rules and jumping into ccTLD’s with no idea of the specific laws can get very costly.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of guys like Sedo.
Good. Bwahahaha…
Markus you’re a fucking idiot.
France, meet Utah.
Utah, France.
Sheesh.
Duane: equivalent to .de and .fr is .us not .com and there are restrictions on .us as well
So, they keep the lion share of parking revenue and now pay some out as well. That is absolutely correct judgment.
Great news. The registrar should have been fined even more as they are the fence in this operation. It’s about time they become responsible players. Sedo aids and abets. What a pair!
Viva la France!
Open
“So, they keep the lion share of parking revenue” wow you got to get yourself a better deal with your parking company