Date:         Sun, 21 Feb 1999 12:12:30 -0500
Reply-To:     "David..M" <dmc@CYBURBAN.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         "David..M" <dmc@CYBURBAN.COM>
Organization: .
Subject:      Re: HELP - The Volkswagen Lawyers are after me! - HELP
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Robert Rountree wrote:
>
> Sounds like your usual American Bullying (they don't own the internet).....
> try this for starters.... Just add the disclaimer at the bottom of your page
> (just like Vanagon.com has added to their web page) then wait and let them
> spend some of their money on legal strong arming first.... then if you get
> one from VW CDN... at least they will negotiate with you, and you know it's
> time to switch... but on the other hand... you were smart enough to be ahead
> "on the curve" on this one.... make them BUY it from you.... I bet you they
> will.... don't give up YOUR intellectual right to have acquired that address
> before they were bright enough to wake up to the importance of the net......
> IMHO... (which is worth what you paid for it)
>
If you read their letter carefully, you will see they are asking him to
stop USING the trademark but then they ask for CANCELLATION of the
domains. IMHO, he could just stop using the domain name. I'm not sure
its illegal to just own it. Of course that would mean paying the yearly
fee for nothing in the hope that VW would come along and offer to pay
big bucks for it. That is unlikely since there are now moves to expand
the domain suffuxes beyond .COM .NET etc., so they may eventually be
able to use something like VOLKSWAGEN.CARS.
I am curious to know why they did not mention anything about VANAGON.