Narnia.mobi Domain Embattled

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
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A Scottish family is under fire from the estate of C.S. Lewis and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) due to the domain name “Narnia.mobi.” The family bought the domain as a gift for their son back in 2006 so that he can use it as an email address but are now facing pressure to release the name. Do you think they should release the domain or are they entitled to keep it?

"We'd been saving it as a surprise for our little boy's birthday, to coincide with the release of the Narnia film," said Mrs. Saville-Smith, referring to the British release of Walt Disney Co's "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian."
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Sitting on the domain for the better part of 2 years without doing anything? That's equal to cyber-squatting if you ask me.

(Now, if nobody had bought the domain until recently, then my tune would probably change).
 
so wait, these people bought it before a corporation and they are getting shit for it? If it really was a gift for their son, they weren't intending to use it for profit. Therefore i don't see how its cyber squatting....which i consider the purchase of typo names to get hits, or potentially popular domains so that they can sell at an inflated price. This doesn't fit that.

This is just corporate bullying. Their angry that someone beat them to the punch... But to my knowledge the internet is first come first serve.
 
Going to completely disagree with you. It's a pretty clear cut case of cyber-squatting. They said:

"We'd been saving it as a surprise for our little boy's birthday, to coincide with the release of the Narnia film," said Mrs. Saville-Smith
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Ummm - their little boy hasn't had a birthday since 2006? They couldn't have "given" it to him earlier? Also, they freely admit that they wanted it to coincide with the release of the film. Had this been their last name or something, I could understand, but it has nothing to do with them personally as much as it does the film and IP.
 
blah i skipped right past it...

i'm still staying anti-corporation though :D
 
wfalcon said:
Going to completely disagree with you. It's a pretty clear cut case of cyber-squatting. They said:



Ummm - their little boy hasn't had a birthday since 2006? They couldn't have "given" it to him earlier? Also, they freely admit that they wanted it to coincide with the release of the film. Had this been their last name or something, I could understand, but it has nothing to do with them personally as much as it does the film and IP.
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They're saving it to coincide with the movie release to make it a special birthday present. If your son is a vintage muscle car enthusiast and you find some vehicle that's very rare, in perfect working order when he's 12 do you A) give it to him on his 13th birthday and say "Well, you can't drive it, but you can look at it" or do you B) wait until his 16th when he has his license and can hop in and drive it around after you surprise him with it?

Guess either way the surprise is kind of ruined now for the kid.
 
I'm willing to bet that the family would still be under pressure to release the domain name even if they were in fact using it.
 
There are guys out there doing this for a living .. and getting away with it.

If these people had the foresight to buy the domain they should be compensated for it... plain and simple.
 
Unfortunately "Narnia" is trademarked and copyrighted and all that.

Even if you registered "Coke.com" in 1991, you'd have not right to it since it belongs to the cola people. The same goes here.

Unfortunate, since these folks seemed well-intentioned. But those are the breaks people. Narnia belongs to the Lewis estate, not Joe Blow. Ask the Aspirin guys what happens when you fail to protect your trademark.
 
You buy it, you own it...pay them if you feel your company, who's slow on the uptake, now wants it. Cybersquatting or not, I feel they can either keep it, or these people can buy it off of the family. To me, it's like buying a plot of land. You can buy it, and say you were waiting till the future to actually build a house on it, or even whatever your reason is. Then someone feels that land should have a mini-mall on it instead. Should you just give the land to them because they're a corporation and feel they deserve it because they have money, or do you decide to sell it or keep it?

No one should be forced to give something up they purchased because a corporation feels they want it. If they really wanted, it could of purchased it first, but they didn't, now they can decide if they want to pay the family, or let them keep it.
 
Depending on where you live, a trademark infringement may only apply to a similar business. There's nothing to stop a company calling themselves "Apple Paint Store" even if there's a hairy behemoth called Apple Computers. When I registered a company name years ago, it ended up similar to another company's name in another business; my lawyer said - no problem, since we don't compete.
 
Aw yay what a happy kid go get A FUCKING DOMAIN???? for his birthday. Yawn. Kid's obese and spoiled I reckon, fuck it who cares. A Domain. Wow. Poor world.
 
Darkest Daze said:
You buy it, you own it...pay them if you feel your company, who's slow on the uptake, now wants it. Cybersquatting or not, I feel they can either keep it, or these people can buy it off of the family. To me, it's like buying a plot of land. You can buy it, and say you were waiting till the future to actually build a house on it, or even whatever your reason is. Then someone feels that land should have a mini-mall on it instead. Should you just give the land to them because they're a corporation and feel they deserve it because they have money, or do you decide to sell it or keep it?
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Quick, nobody tell this guy about eminent domain. It isn't right but you do know it's happening even in today's times? It isn't limited to people not currently using the land though. You have a house that you are currently living on land the government wants they can take it. They have to make a "just compensation" offer first, which of course will always be WAY under it's real value, and if you still say no they can just take it. They can then turn around and hand it to somebody to build a mall on if they want.

You not hear about the Kelo vs City of New London case just 2-3 years ago? Not only did the city win (Supreme Court agreed the city had the full right to take their homes in order to destroy them and turn the land into a resort) but THEN the city to add insult to injury demanded the people pay backrent because the moment the city wanted the land it BECAME their land, since the people fought against it the whole time it was in the courts the city says the people were living on the city's land (since they'd already told the people they were going to take it willingly or not) Therefore the people by the city's reasoning owed tens of thousands of dollars in rent for staying on what was their own property originally.


"Soon after the decision, city officials announced plans to charge the residents of the homes for back rent for the five years since procedures began. The city contends that the residents have been on city property for those five years and owe tens of thousands of dollars of rent."
 
They bought the domain legally,they aren't profiting from it or using copyrighted material on it.It's not "cyber-squatting" to any degree.They paid for it,they own it.Sad that Disney has become just another money hungry corporation.
 
disney died when Disney froze. It's pretty much as simple as that, the vision of the artist is long since gone and he's probably rolling in his cryogenic chamber.
 
If I want to call my house "Narnia" I can do so - it's private property. The estate of C.S. Lewis has no right to come and posess my house because of that, what a crock! Remember that the domain name is just a label for the IP, so this is in fact exactly the same sort of scenario.
 
Sounds like when McDonald's came to Jamaica and said that the McDonald's that had existed there for decades had to change their name.
 
Emission said:
First come first serve. Done.
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QFT. The idiots should have registered it when the first movie was in development, not wait until after the fact so they could pounce on someone who probably can't fight back.

If I had "monkey-crap.com", and a product came available in the stores called Monkey-crap (and was a big seller) - I automatically have to roll over and grovel?

Compensate me appropriately, and I might give it up, otherwise GET STUFFED!
 
GuruX said:
Sitting on the domain for the better part of 2 years without doing anything? That's equal to cyber-squatting if you ask me.

(Now, if nobody had bought the domain until recently, then my tune would probably change).
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Companies have been doing this for years. Let the family keep it and move on.
 
Has everyone here missed the fact that this is not a .com domain? What is .mobi anyway? It would need to be a domain that internet users would generally expect to be the CS Lewis property would it not? A sub-domain should not count, such as narnia.myspace.com. Other than that, I agree with ianken in that the name was already trademarked.
 
From Wikipedia
.mobi (also known informally as dotMobi) is a top-level domain approved by ICANN Jul 11 2005 - 04:47 PM and managed by the mTLD global registry dedicated to delivering the Internet to mobile devices via the Mobile Web
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So, I guess if this is a top level domain for mobile devices, it is the same as .com for all intents. Therefore I'd have to again agree with ianken, copyright trumps the early bird.

I do not believe that cybersquatting was their intent, but they are pretty close. They may not have tried to sell it for an inflated price or disparaged the company, usually accepted requirements for the "cybersquatting" moniker, but they did register a trademarked name that they did not have any reasonable connection to.
 
Exactly. First come first serve. If the corporation wants it they can try and buy it. If the people don't want to sell it then tough.
 
dagas said:
Sounds like when McDonald's came to Jamaica and said that the McDonald's that had existed there for decades had to change their name.
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Exactly. They want the domain, they can pony for it.
 
Interesting that they feel Narnia.mobi is worth fighting for when they already have Narnia.com!

I found this list of mobi-sites on another forum for all those who are interested in The Mobile Web:
Banking
BofA.mobi (Bank of America)
Deutsche-Bank.mobi
Wachovia.mobi
Barclays.mobi
RBC.mobi (Royal Bank of Canada)

Financial Services
Fidelity.mobi
Ing.mobi
AXA.mobi

Insurance
StateFarm.mobi

Automotive
Ferrari.mobi
BMW.mobi
Mercedes-Benz.mobi
Rolls-Royce.mobi
VolvoCars.mobi
FordCA.mobi (Ford Canada)
JaguarXF.mobi
Opel.mobi

Travel
Priceline.mobi

Hotels
Marriott.mobi

Airlines
Iberia.mobi
Lufthansa.mobi
AirNZ.mobi (Air New Zealand)
SAS.mobi

Rental Cars
Hertz.mobi

Transportation
Amtrak.mobi
AAA.mobi (American Automobile Association)
Thalys.mobi

Logistics
DHL.mobi

Sports
ESPN.mobi
NBA.mobi
WNBA.mobi
UFC.mobi

Magazines
Time.mobi (Time Magazine)
BusinessWeek.mobi
CNNMoney.mobi
Maxim.mobi

Beverages
Smirnoff.mobi

TV
Fox.mobi
NGC.mobi (National Geographic Channel)
USAnetwork.mobi
TBS.mobi (Turner Broadcasting Systems)

Video Games
Xbox.mobi
IGN.mobi

Internet
MSN.mobi

Domains
Sedo.mobi / SedoPro.mobi
GoDaddy.mobi / TDNAM.mobi
Netsol.mobi (Network Solutions)

Technology
Cisco.mobi
TexasInstruments.mobi

News
FoxNews.mobi
AlJazeera.mobi

Newspapers
NYPost.mobi
TheTimes.mobi
TheSun.mobi

Guides
Zagat.mobi

Mobile Operators
T-Mobile.mobi
Three.mobi
Vodafone.mobi
TIM.mobi
Orange.mobi
ChinaMobile.mobi

Mobile Manufacturers
Nokia.mobi
SonyEricsson.mobi

Telecommunications
Ericsson.mobi
SamsungMobile.mobi
GSMWorld.mobi (GSMA)
3Skype.mobi

Weather
Weather.mobi (The Weather Channel)

Department Stores
Nordstrom.mobi

Clothing
Polo.mobi
BenettonPress.mobi (United Colors of Benetton)

Pet Food
Purina.mobi

Oil
Castrol.mobi
Eni.mobi

Airports
Schiphol.mobi (Amsterdam)

NGO's
WWF.mobi (World Wildlife Fund)

Cities, States & Countries (Official Sites)
Barcelona.mobi
Frankfurt.mobi
Dublin.mobi
Helsinki.mobi
InformNY.mobi (New York State Department of Transportation)
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I'll be the odd man out. I think the company is just protecting its name. Sure it could have purchased the site, but maybe they didn't think about it as it is not a commonly used domain. How many people here have ever heard of it? Looks like few to me. So why should they register every possible narnia domain name on unheard of top level domains if nobody uses them.

Problem here is not that they parents wanted to give their child a domain. But that they held it till the movie come out to give to their child then gave it to them to use for their email address. Somebody aboved used the anology of a car for a child. Problem between that and this is that the child could have used the domain 2 years ago. Instead the parents bought it right after the 1st movie then waited for another movie to come out so that they could start using it. Meaning they wanted it to be associated with the movie and not just something that he was using due to some other meaning.

Even though they claim they didn't want to try to make money off of it, they did want to associate their son's email address with the Narnia universe (movie, whatever). Thus I can see where the company would have a reason to not want to allow it. As for those who said they can pay them for it. That isn't how it works. At best the family can only recieve what they paid for the domain. Anything more than that and it would be assumed that they were hold it to get money from it. Just like the case between Microsoft and the kid Mike Rowe in Canada about 2 years ago or so. He thought he would be funny and told Microsoft he would sell them the site for something like $10,000. They took that as a confession that he was just trying to use the site as a way to get money from Microsoft.

Had the family bought it due to it being a family name or something like that then I could understand it and would side with them. However it would appear more to me that they just looked around for the first narnia domain that had not been registered yet and held on to it untill it would be more well known to make use of it to allow their child to be able to associate their email address with a well known movie. Which to me is something that a company has a right to stop.
 
ianken said:
Unfortunately "Narnia" is trademarked and copyrighted and all that.

Even if you registered "Coke.com" in 1991, you'd have not right to it since it belongs to the cola people. The same goes here.

Unfortunate, since these folks seemed well-intentioned. But those are the breaks people. Narnia belongs to the Lewis estate, not Joe Blow. Ask the Aspirin guys what happens when you fail to protect your trademark.
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Actually you are wrong about this, it would only be an issue if they where in the same business. So using your theory, everyone who throws the worked coke (cocaine) owes coca cola money. As stated in the article, they bought it for their kid, they are not trying to compete with Disney and by the sounds of it they want to just use it as an email. It is fair and square. people do this all the time, the nice thing about this though as others stated, the potential use of emanate domain could come into play but then you are arguing for virtual property which does not fall under those rights. As such Disney should of and could of bought the domain when it went on sale.
 
Am I the only one that thought it was funny that there are only two network stations that have registered their names on that TLD?

Al Jazeera, annnnd...

Fox News. lol
 
finalgt said:
Am I the only one that thought it was funny that there are only two network stations that have registered their names on that TLD?

Al Jazeera, annnnd...

Fox News. lol
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Network news stations, rather. Curse you, absent edit button!
 
finalgt said:
Am I the only one that thought it was funny that there are only two network stations that have registered their names on that TLD?

Al Jazeera, annnnd...

Fox News. lol
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I think the list is for live mobi-sites only, lol.
I'm sure others have registered their name in .mobi but have not developed/released a site yet.

Also Fox.mobi is a live site.
 
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