Battle of Brooklyn Cyberspace War
As many Brooklyn residents know, there is a heated debate over the land use in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Apparently, the park will undergo large scale renovation, including the inclusion of a luxury high-rise. Residents of the area are vehemently against using the park land for residential purposes.
The residents that oppose the plan call themselves Park Defense, and published their arguments on the website www.parkdefense.org. From a legal standpoint, the dispute got interesting when the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy, proponents of the project, registered www.parkdefense.com and www.parkdefense.net, and used the domains to rout users to its own website. Park Defense vowed to sue.
I think that Park Defense has a huge uphill battle ahead of them regarding the domain name dispute. On the one hand, both the Anti-Cybersquatting statute and the ICANN domain registration terms frown upon domain name registrations that are not conducted for the bona fide purpose of offering goods or services. It is well established that registering a domain name for the purpose of diverting traffic to the registrant's main site is not a bona fide purpose.
However, there are many problems with Park Defense's case. First, the special interest group does not own and trademark rights to the term Park Defense. A registration is only actionable if the registration either infringes a registered or common law trademark, or is confusingly similar.
The second problem is that the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy is not using any of the domain names in order to sell goods or services. Rather, it is a non-profit group with the mission "...to ensure the creation, adequate funding, proper maintenance, public support, and citizen enjoyment of Brooklyn Bridge Park through partnership with government, development of programming, and active promotion of the needs of the park and its constituents." This is a big problem for Park Defense's case. Even if the domain infringed a trademark, anyone is still free to use the domain name for non-commercial uses.
In any case, the BBPC decided not to continue using the domain names for redirect purposes. Currently, the domain names do not point to any website.
The residents that oppose the plan call themselves Park Defense, and published their arguments on the website www.parkdefense.org. From a legal standpoint, the dispute got interesting when the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy, proponents of the project, registered www.parkdefense.com and www.parkdefense.net, and used the domains to rout users to its own website. Park Defense vowed to sue.
I think that Park Defense has a huge uphill battle ahead of them regarding the domain name dispute. On the one hand, both the Anti-Cybersquatting statute and the ICANN domain registration terms frown upon domain name registrations that are not conducted for the bona fide purpose of offering goods or services. It is well established that registering a domain name for the purpose of diverting traffic to the registrant's main site is not a bona fide purpose.
However, there are many problems with Park Defense's case. First, the special interest group does not own and trademark rights to the term Park Defense. A registration is only actionable if the registration either infringes a registered or common law trademark, or is confusingly similar.
The second problem is that the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy is not using any of the domain names in order to sell goods or services. Rather, it is a non-profit group with the mission "...to ensure the creation, adequate funding, proper maintenance, public support, and citizen enjoyment of Brooklyn Bridge Park through partnership with government, development of programming, and active promotion of the needs of the park and its constituents." This is a big problem for Park Defense's case. Even if the domain infringed a trademark, anyone is still free to use the domain name for non-commercial uses.
In any case, the BBPC decided not to continue using the domain names for redirect purposes. Currently, the domain names do not point to any website.
posted by Dan Levy | 10:27 AM
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