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Readers' Letters Nice and Easydoesit®

Easycome®, Easygo® for 'Easy' domains

The Easy way to crush dissenting voices
Easy now: Stelios calls to explain his company's behaviour

Regarding Easyjet's Stelios Haji-Ioannou apparent ownership of domain names starting with the word 'easy', Bo Bendtsen can see the blindingly obvious:

Easy Group might own the trademark "EASY", however it a normal English word and they have to accept concurrent use. I have a hard time believing that you bought into that story.

When you sell there are a few words you can use as:

Easy Free Cheap Bargain, etc.

Next someone will come and claim that they are the only ones that can use the word FREE and everyone including Freeserve should give up their domain.

There is no justification for allowing anyone the use of the word "EASY". What about Easynet that was trading long before Easyjet. Why don't Easy Group have rights to that then?

Fair enough. And there's more from Thomas Worthington:

Stelios's argument is based on one - false - assumption: that "Easy" is a brand. It's not, it's a generic term which can only be turned into a brand under IP law by being associated with a distinctive devise, logo mark or whatever. So "Easy" in bouncy orange letters is a brand and a defensible one, as is "Easyeverything" which is not a generic term.

The way to look at it is this: if someone started "WebJet" and "WebCarHire" should they be able to take any domain starting with the word "Web"? Obviously not.

If he wants to to talk about IP law it would help if he knew anything about it. THEN he could try a course on ethics for a follow up.

Stelios is an arrogant fool if he thinks his farcical argument carries any weight outside of his legal department of yes-men.

So, if you have an 'easy' domain name, how should you counter Stelios' covetous advances? Guy Eastwood thinks that you should throw yourself on the tender mercies of WIPO or ICANN:

Surely anyone receiving a threatening letter from easyblah would be doing well to respond saying they are perfectly willing to accept an adjudication by WIPO or ICANN (especially given the track record) ...

Wouldnt that constitute some form of 'fair and decent offer to resolve' on the accused's part?

I'd take a guess that any judge being presented the fact that the accused did immediately make such an offer to accept 3rd party arbitration would be inclined to instruct the plaintiff to take such a route. Hence the accused could reasonably afford to defend his/herself even and certainly incur very minimal legal fees from a lawyer.

It's certainly about time the playing field was levelled in respect of domain disputes... maybe even some form of pro-rata cost basis that guaranteed to set costs at a % of income/turnover rather than a fee.. that way M$ would lose 1/2 their Co. just the same as Fred Boggit's Multiple Sclerosis page

Just a thought ;o)

Good idea. No doubt WIPO and ICANN will ignore the pressure of Stelios' high profile and cash and award on merit. Just like they always do...

Btw, one of Stelios' mates give us some stick in this week's flame, which you can enjoy here.

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