Perfume Bay Wins Trademark Dispute with eBay

[mandy]

Perfume Bay™ Wins Trademark Dispute with eBay; Judge Stays Injunction, Permitting Continuing Use of www.perfumebay.com

... the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit Tuesday night granted Perfume Bay Inc.'s motion to stay the lower court's injunction against the company. The stay permits Perfume Bay -- which has been involved in a two-year lawsuit with eBay -- to continue using its URL, www.perfumebay.com, pending final decision by the Appellate Court.

..."While many companies would have backed down and settled, when faced with a much larger adversary, Perfume Bay chose to defend its name to retain brand equity...

...Judge Keller decided Perfume Bay won the unclean hand defense, finding "eBay used deceptive advertising, which suggested a link between the two companies." He issued a counter-injunction ordering eBay to cease ads using Perfume Bay or any similarly confusion variant thereof in the heading or text of any advertisement, including "sponsored links and banner ads." "As a matter of fact, they (eBay) do it to this day, which is remarkable," said the Judge.

full article: http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/051208/20051208005442.html?.v=1

[mandy]

the latest from the blog of Perfume Bay's owner:

Not only did the court rule in our favor, but the court forbade eBay from using OUR mark on ANY of THEIR sponsored links or banner ads. During the court proceedings, the judge ruled that eBay had used “deceptive advertising” that made it look like our two companies were linked. He ordered eBay to stop this practice, which we certainly appreciated!

Unfortunately, our court battle continues. The only counts still being contended is the Judge’s ruling of the “likelihood” that our URLs could be confusing to customers. This doesn’t make sense! Our company is very different from eBay – no one has proved that any customer has been confused and thought that our two sites were the same.

After the ruling in 2005, the Judge asked us to insert a separator – a space or an underscore – in our URL, perfumebay.com. Unfortunately, this cannot be done. Internet regulations do not allow a URL to be registered with a space or an underscore, so we would have to change our entire URL and therefore lose all the branding awareness, search engine rankings and momentum we had made with our marketing campaign. So, we chose to take our case to the Appellate Court...

full article: http://www.makesnoscents.com/

[regic]

After the ruling in 2005, the Judge asked us to insert a separator – a space or an underscore – in our URL, perfumebay.com. Unfortunately, this cannot be done. Internet regulations do not allow a URL to be registered with a space or an underscore

Another clueless judge with little knowledge of the Internet. :

[bargainbloodhound]

It's rather ironic that eBay has a hissy fit when anyone registers a domain name containing 'bay' when you consider that eBay profits from trademark infringement/cybersquatting/typosquatting on a daily basis.

Just a small sampling of the infringing domain names currently for sale on eBay:

MSNdvd .com - Microsoft Network DVD Domain Name
MSNcd .com - Microsoft Network CD Domain Name
GoToMyMSN.com MSN MICROSOFT DOMAIN NAME #4 Alexa $$$$$$
YAHOO-MOBILE.MOBI Domain Name for Sale!!!
YAHOO-VIDEO.MOBI Domain Name for Sale!!!
GoogleGolfing.com Google EARTH Consulting Domain

and my favorites

EBAYERS.US HOT ebay Selling Auction Website DOMAIN Name
EBAYING IT.com THE ULTIMATE ebaY 3,4,5 DOMAIN NAME $$$$
EBAYED IT.com THE ULTIMATE ebaY 3,4,5 DOMAIN NAME $$$$$ 

[jezebel]

eBay's domains category is an effin' cesspool!. 

[BellisimaJ.]

It's rather ironic that eBay has a hissy fit when anyone registers a domain name containing 'bay' when you consider that eBay profits from trademark infringement/cybersquatting/typosquatting on a daily basis.

Ironic indeed since they are undoubtedly fully aware of the situation, and yet do nothing to ameliorate it.