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Who owns Chicago2016.com? Currently, MBA student Stephen Frayne Jr., who bought the domain back in 2004. But now the Chicago Olympic bid folk, whose website is currently Chicago2016.org, and the USOC are suing him, claiming the site belongs to them.
"We certainly see Chicago2016.com as the logical default domain for our site, and we believe having someone else control it is misleading for people seeking information about Chicago's bid," said Patrick Sandusky, a spokesman for Chicago 2016, a moniker protected by trademark. ..."I can tell you this is absolutely not about free speech, but about the natural domain for our site, and the domain name that is rightfully ours."
Frayne doesn't see it that way. He says he wants to foster "public discussion," and says he isn't interested in selling; he also owns Tokyo2016.com and a bunch of other city/number combos. Chicago2016.com does make it very clear that it isn't the official site for the city's bid, but going by ICANN standards, it seems like Frayne has an uphill battle. [Trib]
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I think he has every right to create a foreign discussion about it just as the ppl do for the event. Its very clearly marked that it is not associated. Why should the city automatically get it b/c they are bigger? They have the .org site, which actually SHOULD be the one they have the extension for.
If http://www.whitehouse.com was allowed to be a porn site for some time (and is still not involved with the Federal government), then what's the issue here?
Chicago 2016 is trademarked, which as far as I understand changes the game.
was it trademarked in 2004?
Margaret - Do you know when Chicago 2016 was trademarked? I had read that this individual purchased the domain a full two years before the bid was initiated, so I'm wondering if that predates the trademark application. With all the legalese of trademarks, that might not make any difference in the case, but I think it affects the "fair play" issues here. As if fair play and Olympics can be mentioned in the same paragraph.
So the Chicago Olympics folks have gotten butthurt over speculation on domain names? Opportunists have been registering domain names well in advance of any type of publicity/notoriety since the beginning of the Internet.
Simply because the spokespeople feel that it's 'natural' for them and their cause doesn’t give them eminent domain -- pun intended.
Cannot believe I missed the "eminent domain" joke for the headline. Ten points, Where!
Finders keepers, losers weepers
Visit this site. This guy has been in a lawsuit with Nissan Motors USA for almost 10 years now. The whole story is is detailed here.
So Chicago 2016 can make a big stink about this but it is likely that the 2016 Olympics will be over before they own the domain.
Why do these people even care? It's absurd for the Olympics to be in this city, which was just named as, what was it again, THE MOST STRESSFUL CITY IN THE COUNTRY?
I still don't know how we made it this far to be oue of three finalists.
First filing from what I can tell was Oct 11, 2006 for Trademark and ServiceMark recognition.
USPTO Filing Record
Chicago2016.com via DNSTOOLS
He registered the site four days before Chicago 2016 registered the trademark.