eReferee Cannot Use The Word Referee

from the that-makes-it-tough dept

A website focusing on sports referees called eReferee has been told they cannot use that domain or any domain or name that use the word referee at all. Even though they're focused on giving content to referees, it's apparently Referee Magazine's trademark. This is silly. Referee is such a common word, I can't believe someone has the trademark on it. Also, this decision is overturning an original decision of ICANN's (no one ever thought they really had any power, did they?). The worst part is that now eReferee is having all their traffic redirected to Officiating.com (their new name) and Referee Magazine is pissed off, saying that's a violation of the ruling and they want money for each day it continues. How the hell else are people going to learn about eReferee's new name? This is just silly.
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  1. identicon
    Ryan, 16 Feb 2001 @ 2:07pm

    No Subject Given

    Gold digging, it looks like Referee magazine maybe trying to get a little infusion of cash into its bottom line. Otherwise what would be the use of suing ereferee.com (I don't think you'd cofuse the two easily)?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    DigDug, 19 Feb 2001 @ 8:02am

    Not exactly saints...

    It looks like eReferee are not exactly saints themselves. They've taken their time to register just about every useful domain with the word referee in it. Take a look (it's on the right):

    http://www.officiating.com/index.cgi?page=letter2

    link to this | view in thread ]


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