Comcast taking action against Comcastroturf.com for trademark infringement

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/6cvg82/comcast_is_trying_to_censor_our_pronet_neutrality/

by dabber • 9 years ago

131 54 9 years ago

That seems like more a trademark issue than the issue itself. I think they have to sue you to defend a trademark, and their lawyers are just overly conservative. So I don't really blame them for this, though they probably won't take it all the way to court and fight hard.

The company that sent the notice looks like they have some shell scripts running in cron that send out scary notices whenever they see a domain that matches a regex for a client that pays them money:

https://www.lookingglasscyber.com/products/machine-readable-...

neilsimp1• 9 years ago

It could also be interpreted as trying to censor the website and using the trademark issue as a justification. I'm not saying they are doing that, but it would be an easy way to justify a lawsuit without looking too sinister.

gkimfl• 9 years ago

Techdirt also has this story: https://tdrt.io/gej

Re: "have to sue you defend a trademark"

The bully will simply state the oft-repeated excuse that they must bully according to trademark law, which isn't remotely the case.

https://tdrt.io/g8w

It's the same excuse we see time and time again and it's almost always false.

https://tdrt.io/fZ5

MichaelBurge3• 9 years ago

Your 2nd Techdirt article only provides evidence for my point: The brewery paid some firm to run a regex and file automated lawsuits, but didn't actually care about suing them at all. Comcast could be in exactly the same position.

Whether they're right or wrong about that doesn't matter: The topic isn't reforming trademark law, people are trying to hint that Comcast are specifically targeting this one domain to shut down the bad PR.

mikeash5• 9 years ago

You only have to sue to defend a trademark when there's an actual violation. Their lawyers being too conservative and trying to defend their trademark even when there isn't a violation isn't a justification, and you absolutely should blame them for this.

yebyen8• 9 years ago

I think you also don't strictly have to sue even if there is an actual violation; you can approve individuals to use a mark without totally abdicating your rights, giving stipulations. That would be creating a licensed use (and then there is no longer a violation.)

You do sometimes need to formally assert your ownership of the Trademark in order to maintain your legal protections, but you do not have to open with "Cease and Desist" in 100% of cases where a mark may be confusing in order to retain protections. I can't think of a specific case where this happened right now, but I have definitely heard of this happening. Maybe someone here knows of such a case. I think it was a company that produces video games.

(A competent IP lawyer would probably advise you against diluting a brand in this way in most cases without having a very good reason for allowing the use. The case I am thinking of was something along the lines of "going after these people with a legal threat right out of the gate is likely to result in severe bad PR for us because they are likely to be seen by our customers as performing a valuable service." So let's ask them nicely to change the name, or offer them a license for a nominal fee of $1 to use the mark instead; bring them into legal compliance, maintain our protected position, reap positive PR and save on lawyer bills.)

In the case of this thread I definitely agree that the lawyer is totally out of bounds.

ItendToDisagree2• 9 years ago

Why is net neutrality important again? Is anyone ready to respond with a defense of Comcast's monopoly on high speed ISP service? (edit: in many cities and locations)

/snark

djrogers2• 9 years ago

I don't see how net neutrality regulations will stop trademark and copyright abuses, which is the case here. Now if Comcast were found to be hijacking or blocking the site in question, that's a net neutrality issue (as well as a likely civil issue in a US court).

ItendToDisagree2• 9 years ago

The connection is pretty obvious. But I'll spell it out.

Comcast appears to be using patent troll level fuckery in an attempt to further their goal of stopping net neutrality. A goal, which itself is about controlling the flow of information, and mirrors this attempt to control information.

Attempts to control (like turtles) go all the way down.

skewart3• 9 years ago

But there is no trademark or copyright abuse here. The domain and website in question - comcastroturf - is protected under fair use. It's not impersonating Comcast in any way.

The concern is that if they're willing to be aggressive jerks in a situation like this, why make it easier for them to actually hijack or block the site? Of course, net neutrality is about much more than that, but that's how I understood the direct tie-in here.

mikeash5• 9 years ago

I think the point is not that net neutrality would somehow stop Comcast from abusing its trademark like this, but rather that absent net neutrality Comcast probably would be hijacking or blocking it.

vonklaus3• 9 years ago

SpaceX and many smallSat providers are.

pocketstar• 9 years ago

No spacecraft can hope match terrestiral latency, the speed of light is not your friend. There was an identical push for space ISPs in the 90's. Iridium was the only sucessful leo space "ISP". Elon has been sucessful with what he says he will do but all these space bases "ISPs" are vaporware until they deliver. Look at the joke of oneweb with their botched softbank merger with intelsat, consilidating billions of dollars of existing debt to fund another few billion to develop a new constillation does not bode well.

Echostar is doing a good job with their proven GEO ISP constillation. With several billion in the bank they are the most promising to be sucessful, keep an eye on their HTS development over the next couple years. The problem with GEO ISPs is they have 1-2s latency :(

theossuary• 9 years ago

I mean, who can really say this isn't a clear-cut trademark issue? They're using Comcast in their URL. Any sane company would try to fight having their name associated with this debacle. If I registered "nytimeslies.com" and it got as much publicity as this site has, do you really think they'd sit idly by and let their brand be trashed by some idiot on the internet who has no proof that NYTimes actually, you know, lies?

Can somebody please explain why I'm wrong above, and Comcast is actually bulling the poor little guy throwing around baseless accusations? To be fair, I hate Comcast (and support Title II); but I also don't believe in defending crap like this just because it's targeted at a company I don't like.

thaumasiotes• 9 years ago

There is no protection in the trademark law against people using your trademark to refer to you. Referring to you is the point of the trademark in the first place.

This is a clear-cut trademark issue, but it's clear that Comcast is wrong. Registering and publishing at nytimeslies.com without evidence that the New York Times actually lies could be a libel issue, but it can't be a trademark one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_use

6stringmerc2• 9 years ago

Boom, here's the rub. Comcast will lose. Their lawyers will win, with plenty of tasty billable hours, but no, even a one-eyed donkey could pick this rotten tomato out of a pile.

Declanomous• 9 years ago

Exactly. Nobody is going to be confused and think comcastroturf is Comcast's website or a website that Comcast registered.

pavel_lishin• 9 years ago

I mean, who can really say this isn't a clear-cut trademark issue?

The courts.

skewart3• 9 years ago

Because it's free speech protected by law.

There is no trademark violation. Comcast is trying to scare people into thinking that there is, which is bullying.

_eht2• 9 years ago

I am actually really curious about this issue. They use a trademarked name in their URL and you are saying this is not a violation? Is that actually true? I'm trying to find some supporting docs on this.

The other day I was being cheeky and went to notreddit.com (it's owned by reddit and redirects to /r/redditalternatives) but if someone wanted to simply clone reddit (open source) and use that URL instead of something like voat.co, etc, that would be perfectly fine?

Then there are cases of direct name URLS like nissan.com of Nissan Computers which existed for a very long time before Nissan the car company had a web presence. They have been in litigation[0] back and forth for years and now Nissan the car company is attempting to do a federal trademark that would cover "...computers and computer peripherals among other classes of goods and services."

Interesting cases. Anyone else have any further thoughts?

[0] http://www.digest.com/Big_Story.php

geofft• 9 years ago

A trademark is a mark used in trade (sort of like how a copyright is a right to copy, and if no copying is involved, copyright law is irrelevant).

Comcast's trademark reserves the right to use the name "Comcast" in their trade. It prevents me from starting a local TV station called "Comcast", or a VPN service called "ComCastSecure", or whatever. It may or may not prevent me from opening a hot-dog stand called "Com Cast Hot Dogs" or a fashion label called "COMME des CASTES," depending on whether the courts think people will believe these brands are associated with Comcast the TV/internet/etc. company. It certainly does not prevent me, or you, from having use the word "Comcast" several times in our comments -- the entire point of a trademark is that when we say "Comcast" in a discussion about their field of business, we're all referring to the same thing.

If Comcastroturf.com is not engaged in trade, it will be hard to argue trademark infringement. If there is no risk that a Comcast customer or potential customer will believe that Comcastroturf.com is associated with Comcast, it will be very hard to argue trademark infringement.

JustSomeNobody• 9 years ago

Why all the hate for Comcast?

They "... continue to strongly support a free and Open Internet and the preservation of modern, strong, and legally enforceable net neutrality protections."

http://corporate.comcast.com/comcast-voices/comcast-statemen...

nthcolumn• 9 years ago

Due to the obvious disjoint between what they say and what they do.

SimbaOnSteroids• 9 years ago

/s is the tag for sarcasm ;)

yebyen8• 9 years ago

Did I miss the thread where we are gonna discuss the actual issue addressed by Comcastroturf, that someone (maybe not Comcast, I'll concede) is spamming a gazillion comments using actual peoples' names and they are totally not legitimate?

I am not on the list, but I looked up 7 members of my family and four of them are, several of them showing up more than once. Including my 3-year-old nephew, who I am sure is very smart but definitely did not submit comments to the FCC in support of repealing Net Neutrality. (And if he did, he would not use wording identical to hundreds of thousands of other commenters. /totallynotrobots/)

Maybe there's nothing actually novel or surprising to discuss in it there, but I feel like covering the issue this way is absolutely burying the lede a bit.

sp3324• 9 years ago

Did you check the address on the comment to make sure it was the same person? Because I don't see how Comcast would even have the name of a 3-year-old.

yebyen8• 9 years ago

None of the addresses matched at all, at least for my family members.

His parents post to Facebook, I don't know if that's the connection, but my nephew's name is definitely out there on the Internet, so I searched for him and saw two identical posts in his name from different states.

(It's probably a common name and I would concede there, but the comments match the regex formula[1] that's in the Reddit thread exactly, they are definitely not legitimate comments.)

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/6cvg82/comcast_...

Have you found one that matches exactly both name and address? Because I haven't found any, but I'm still convinced that something is rotten here in Denmark. (All of these family members never were Comcast customers or lived in Comcast service areas, so like I said, I'm not at all convinced this is some kind of Comcast data breach. Just that some kind of massive fraud is being perpetrated, by someone in favor of repealing NN.)

I heard a few people say that they found exact matches for names and addresses, but I haven't seen anyone say for sure that they simultaneously matched a real person's name with an address that they actually occupied. I don't think they're doing that.

I did see a comment from someone who looked up their town, found a lot of names they recognized, tried matching them to any county records and came up empty (eg. nobody by that name submitting those comments paid property taxes at the address.)

nathcd• 9 years ago

Did I miss the thread where we are gonna discuss the actual issue addressed by Comcastroturf, that someone (maybe not Comcast, I'll concede) is spamming a gazillion comments using actual peoples' names and they are totally not legitimate?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14419311

6stringmerc2• 9 years ago

Referencing for the sake of Criticism (e.g. Societal Benefit) is robustly protected by the First Amendment and Fair Use Doctrine, which, unless the Courts totally fuck it up (it's possible), should be above the basic Trademark protections.

This situation is basically Monster Cables vs. Blue Jean cables, but without a snarky, go-fuck-yourself response (yet).

http://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/

wand3r2• 9 years ago

They should respond like slutsofinstagram.com did (slutsof in stagram) which was a children's story. I don't understand what Comcast is so mad about:

    Com C AstroTurf

Clearly Communications Companies Astroturfing was too long for a domain. so they shortened it to ComCAstroturf. What's the issue?

tzs• 9 years ago

The claim of slutsofinstagram.com that it is just a coincidence is bolstered by the fact that the site's content does not mention Instagram and what the site purports to be about has no connection to Instagram. If Instagram did not exist, slutsofinstagram.com could still make sense.

Comcastastroturf.com's content is about the industry Comcast is in, and actually explicitly mentions Comcast. That makes a slutsofinstagram excuse much harder.

wand3r2• 9 years ago

Comcast is a portmanteau of communication and broadcast. So:

Comcastastroturf.com's content is about the industry Comcast is in

So yes "communications broadcast Corp" would be mentioned in a site about communication broadcasting corporations BUT to assume that just because they are the most user-hostile, anti-competitive and vile of the ComC's doesn't give them some sort of claim over Communication Companies Astroturfing. It's just a portmanteau of the above 3 words; only 1 of which is found in that other company ;)

ThrowAway123543• 9 years ago

Only tangentially related, but some of you may be amused to learn that one legal standard for whether something infringes a trademark is the "Moron in a hurry" test: meaning, would a moron in a hurry confuse the thing at question with the thing claiming infringement?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_moron_in_a_hurry

Comcast taking action against Comcastroturf.com for trademark infringement

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