Yesterday, the founder of popular screen-sharing app Mikogo shared with the world that he was threatened to be sued by the city of Mannheim if he does not stop using his twitter name, which is http://twitter.com/mannheim. His name is Mark Zondler, but he and the company is based in Mannheim. Does any of you think this is pretty unfair from the city?
First of all, what if your name was Daniel Mannheim? Could they sue you for using your own name? Also, the Twitter account is not abused, or used in any way to undermine the city, and even if it were, we have freedom of speech, so still!
Second of all, if they actually win this, imagine the barrage of lawsuits against people who have legally and properly registered a cool name. Could my brother (Martin) sue the founder of this blog if he used “Martin” as a username on Twitter? Would there be a lawsuit with 20,000 people in a deathmatch, everyone against everyone? I’m sure the lawyers would have fun.In addition, this would spread to Facebook, Google accounts, Yahoo accounts, and the rest of the world, taking down more than a few genuinely great twitterers and bloggers.
Personally, I think the city just wants the name, and tried a threat in the hope that it will work. I don’t think they stand any chance of winning this, so they will probably back down if Mark Zondler refuses to let go of his name. What do you guys think, who is right here, will there be a lawsuit, and if so, who stands to win and why? Get your legal hats and start commenting!
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MikeRoweSoft.com anyone? :)
Hmm, it’s a tough one. I comnpletely understand the user for calling it unfair in this situation. However, I can also understand that in other situations it might be unfair to the owner of the name (ofcourse not something as general as Martin). Often people quickly register domain names for upcoming celebrities while hoping to get a nice amount of money when that celebrity claims the domain name. I can see the same thing happening with social networks.
The big question would be: where do you draw the line?
libeco, I completely agree with you, but it all depends on the usage I think. If I register twitter.com/billgates and I use it as a fun, but obviously stated non-real account for Bill Gates, I think this would constitute fair use.
Its very hard to make a decision in this because I can see the argument for not letting someone called Daniel Pataki use twitter.com/billgates, but I can also see the argument for not limiting name choosing.
In the end, I think the more important thing here is that if I were in this person’s place and Mannheim would have written me a nice letter asking me to please give them my username, they can give me 1 free ad space for a month or something in a good street, I would have said yes, but in this case I would defend this to the end. It’s a question of how they went about this, not the actual legality in my eyes.
That’s a very good point. The first step should alwasy be to come to a mutual agreement which works for both parties.
This already HAS spread over to FaceBook. According to this report on TechCrunch (http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/23/facebook-vanity-url-harman/), FaceBook snatched away the “vanity url” from a person named Harman Bajwa and handed it over to a company named Harman International.
Speculations are that $$ was the primary motivator in this…
Cheers,
m^e
Here in germany there is a law (actually it isn´t a “law”, but I don´t know the english word), that guarantees cities the right of using their name as domain names (heidelberg.de was the initial case, I guess) and as a private person you don´t have a chance to own such a domain name, if the city wants it.
Let´s see, how Mannheim will “force their rights” against a international company, as twitter is not german …
(sorry for my awful english)
I think they should threaten to move the company elsewhere, making the city to lose tax income.
Does that mean that stevejobs could soon be fighting Apple’s CEO in court?