LawMeme LawMeme Yale Law School  
LawMeme
Search LawMeme [ Advanced Search ]
 
 
 
 
Links: Playboy, Sex Court settle
Posted by Steven Wu on Saturday, April 12 @ 01:24:07 EDT Trademark
Playboy was developing its "Sex Court" cable show when it discovered that a porn website had already registered the name www.sexcourt.com. Playboy promptly sued for trademark infringement, asking for an injunction against the use of the domain name.

Now, Playboy has settled with sexcourt.com: Playboy gets the domain name, and the former sexcourt.com owner gets an unspecified amount of money. Just as well, too: it seems like the jury was going to rule against Playboy.

Read the story here

I don't know the facts of the case, but if Playboy did have a trademark on "Sex Court," then it seems to be pretty strong precedent that it would prevail on a trademark infringement suit against a site whose domain name could be easily confused with Playboy's trademark.

 
Related Links
· More about Trademark
· News by Steven Wu


Most read story about Trademark:
Sixth Circuit finds no trademark violation in post-domain paths

Options

 Printer Friendly Page  Printer Friendly Page

 Send to a Friend  Send to a Friend

Threshold
  
The comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content.

Re: Playboy, Sex Court settle (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Saturday, April 12 @ 06:35:49 EDT
Prior art isn't just for patents, there is such a thing as an unregistered trademark although how known it must be before you have rights to it is a point of contention. Obviously the jury thought it was established enough.


[ Reply to This ]


Leges humanae nascuntur, vivunt, moriuntur
Human laws are born, live, and die

Contributors retain copyright interests in all stories, comments and submissions.
Everything else copyright (c) 2002 by the Information Society Project.

This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions
set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later.
The latest version is currently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/.

You can syndicate our news with backend.php

Page Generation: 0.198 Seconds