
Uzi Nissan Spent 8 Years Fighting Nissan Motor Company to Keep Nissan.com - ayanai
https://jalopnik.com/uzi-nissan-spent-8-years-fighting-the-car-company-with-1822815832
======
weinzierl
In Germany we had the case of Dr. Andreas Shell who spent five years fighting
Shell oil company. He had registered shell.de and used it primarily as a
family website but also offered a translation service [1].

The case went to the Federal Court of Justice (German: Bundesgerichtshof,
BGH), the hightest court in the system of ordinary jurisdiction in Germany.
Andres Shell lost and the reasoning was that the "First Come, First Served
Principle" can be overruled by the "Priority Principle", which says that the
better known party has priority.

[1]
[https://web.archive.org/web/19980204065557/http://www.shell....](https://web.archive.org/web/19980204065557/http://www.shell.de:80/)

~~~
pmarreck
> can be overruled by the "Priority Principle", which says that the better
> known party has priority

So basically, the entity with the most money. Got it.

I'm impressed by many German things (note: firstborn American and all my
ancestors are German), but not this.

~~~
HarryHirsch
I can understand the ruling. If you read "shell.de", do you think of Andreas
Shell the attorney or Shell the mineral oil company? The name has been
trademarked for eternity, why should trademarks used as domain names be
treated any different? Anyone can use a name, but only for the thing it
represents, German law has always been applied that way.

The edge case is Deutsche Telekom and their sprawling claim on magenta, not
this.

~~~
PostOnce
Well, suppose your site is "foobar.de" and you have been running a business
from it for 10 years, and tomorrow, a rich man spends 100 million euros on
advertising his new business Foobar Inc, and is overnight the better known
party -- what kind of backwards legal system would hold that money trumps all
other rights? First come first serve makes more sense, so long as it's not
trademark infringement (i.e. he's not selling oil) on a preexisting trademark.

~~~
HarryHirsch
The pragmatic approach would be for the smaller party to change names. This
actually happened. Google couldn't operate Gmail under that name in Germany
because a direct mailing company had registered it before and had been
operating under that name for years. Eventually the domain changed hands, but
that was only sometime after 2010.

~~~
PostOnce
Pragmatic for the rich only. The disadvantaged party now has to foot the bill
for changing names and thereby losing customers who may not again find them.
Why should a society give that sort of obsequious deference to the wealthy?
What benefit to we gain? It's not as though shelloil.de or the German language
equivalent would be so hard to find, or cost them _any_ money or business at
all, since no one goes to shell.de to buy oil directly -- it's pure vanity and
cost some man his moral right. It's disgraceful.

I would not want to live in a society where being rich gives you more rights,
not just in practice, but in law, if that's in fact the case.

Further, I scoff at this concept of pragmatism. Life is more than pragmatics,
pragmatism can easily become a synonym for cruelty, as it has in the past,
whether that's consumer safety, government funded medical, animal welfare, or
any other situation that was previously dictated by economic pragmatism, to
the detriment humanity.

------
solidsnack9000
_The nissan.com website is, at a glance, a funny curiosity of the 1990s
internet, something that seems silly at first. But it was a much more personal
fight for Uzi Nissan, and a worrying reminder of how much a big company or
anyone with a lot of power and money has over someone who doesn’t—right or
wrong._

Yeah, something is wrong with the US legal system. The case could have been
dismissed at the outset. He owned the name; his was a computer company, theirs
a car company.

~~~
dotancohen
He actually had a used car dealership in the US called Nissan Motors almost a
decade before Datsun changed names to Nissan.

~~~
SlowBro
Technically they were called Nissan but not in the US.

Yes the US legal system is indeed messed up. Lots of Pyrrhic victories out
there. Read about the USFL vs NFL case. The USFL actually won their anti-trust
lawsuit against the NFL behemoth —- three dollars.

That one troubled me personally as that shut down the only professional
American football team I rooted for as a kid :-/

Interesting fact: Donald Trump was a USFL team owner. I’m guessing he lost a
lot of money on that.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Football_Leagu...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Football_League)

~~~
toomanybeersies
On the note of Trump owning a USFL team, Trump has been accused of having a
grudge against the NFL because the NFL actually refused to let him buy a team.

To try and get a team, he bought a USFL team, and then pushed the USFL from
the spring/summer to the fall/winter season and starting the lawsuit against
the NFL, in the hopes that he could force a merger with the NFL.

~~~
scoggs
He acted like a massively spoiled baby throughout the entire situation.

I've always viewed him through that lens. The way other involved businessmen
and the fans / people who cared about the general health of professional
football as a whole (because they wanted to preserve a form of entertainment /
ensure the future of pro football for whatever reason) view him. I've seen
that same song and dance repeat ad nauseam in all sorts of different markets
and situations he has his grimy hands in.

------
tzury
Nissan is the Hebrew name for the current month (Hebrew calendar, first month
of the spring, usually falls on March/April).

I think it is first mentioned in the Bible, the old testament, Nehemiah,
Chapter 2:1

    
    
        "And it came to pass in the month Nissan, in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes 
        the king, that wine was before him: and I took up the wine, and gave it unto 
        the king. Now I had not been beforetime sad in his presence."
    
    

So, sure enough, his ancestors owned the name "Nissan" much before car maker
was founded.

~~~
kingofpandora
Did many migrants to Israel adopt new Hebrew last names when they arrived?

Genuinely curious if a familyname like "Nissan" would have been found among
Jewish populations prior to the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language?

~~~
cwzwarich
Jews traditionally didn't have last names, but instead referred to as the
son/daughter of their father, e.g. "Moshe ben David" or "Sarah bat David".

In the past few hundred years, European Jews were generally forced to take
fixed surnames. It's unlikely that Nissan was used as an actual surname at
that point without any explicit patronymic. It's more likely that it was a
father's first name, converted into a surname upon moving to Israel.

~~~
walrus01
The vast majority of Afghans traditionally didn't have last names either. If
you look at the Tazkira (Farsi/Dari language government identity document,
it's an A4 sized single piece of paper that serves as combination birth
certificate and primary government ID), it has the person's name, name of
father, name of grandfather on it. Legally people are known as something like
Showaib, son of Ahmed.

A lot of Afghans who have emigrated to foreign countries have created their
own last names from something related to their family, geographical
area/tribal affiliation, etc. There are also people who have not done this and
their name printed on their passport is a double of their first name, so you
have people named "Jawad Jawad".

------
SlowBro
I actually encountered his story in the early 2000s and I have refused to buy
Nissan cars ever since. Almost compromised once or twice but No. I’m just one
person but we are all a bunch of one persons, and we can all together make a
difference :-)

Interestingly this issue seems to matter less and less as everyone I have
observed goes to websites now via Google. So they don’t go to Nissan.com
first, they Google Nissan and go to the first link. And NissanUSA.com is
indeed the first non-ad link when I searched just now.

~~~
justherefortart
Same for me. Same goes for Infiniti. I was going to get a G35 a few years
back, but because of this, I didn't.

Won't make any difference to Nissan but that's about the best I can do.

~~~
SlowBro
Enough of us doing this and Nissan WILL feel it.

~~~
IgorPartola
Feel but not understand. Instead, every time you buy a Toyota/Honda/whatever,
take a picture of you at the dealer picking up the car and send it to Nissan
explaining why you bought from their competitor. Point to a website explaining
the larger story. If that’s your thing. I’ve never owned a Nissan, but to me
things like Chevy’s refusal to fix faulty ignition switches for nearly a
decade that resulted in many fatal accidents is a better hill to die on.

~~~
SlowBro
Yeah, they all have skeletons in their closet don’t they :-/

------
dghughes
I don't get why it's assumed a domain name belongs to a company. The internet
wasn't built to be a sales machine hell I remember when I saw my first ad on a
website (law firm) in the early 1990s I was surprised and disappointed.

Even Twitter or any social media clawing back a name should be disastrous for
a website desiring people to use it.

My username on a social media site is often confused or assumed to be an
Australian comedian and radio host. I'm waiting for the day my name is taken.
I know I don't own the name or the site but it's poor service to do such a
thing.

~~~
charlesdm
I get why you would want some protections built in. If I registered
Google.co.uk, and I don't have any legal basis on why I should own said
domain, that domain should be transferrable to a valid trademark owner.

But if I'm called James Nissan, and I manage to register Nissan.com, then I
shouldn't be forced to hand it over to Nissan the company. But they can buy
it, sure.

~~~
dghughes
Even the word Google had a rough beginning since the words Googol and
Googolplex are trademarked/copyrighted(?). They were invented by mathematician
Edward Kasner who fought to prevent Google from using a very similar word.

------
whack
I don't understand how anyone can look at this story and think that we live
under a "rule of law". Our rights and freedoms are only available to us if
we're willing to pay top dollar for them. To the tune of $3M in this guy's
case.

If we really want to believe that justice is available to all, we need to push
for universal legal insurance, something akin to Medicare, so that everyone
can afford their day in court against a MegaCorp that's trying to muscle them
out.

~~~
crx087
An individual limit on annual legal expenses would go a long way — say, an
out-of-pocket maximum of 1/10th a person’s net income.

~~~
dpark
Most legal costs go to lawyers, not the courts. Capping lawyer fees at $X just
means you can only get $X of legal representation.

~~~
crx087
Not in an insurance-based model.

------
ohashi
The biggest issue to me was he was running car ads to make money. If he had
only been running his computer business under the brand name, would have had a
lot less trouble. But those car ads probably made good money. Can't find any
old data, but car clicks would probably have been in the dollar range, 500,000
visitors a month, not bad money.

~~~
petre
I highly doubt it makes up for 3M costs paid to defend himself.

------
pmarreck
While I appreciate his principles, it seems downright stupid to me to turn
down, say, an offer of $15 million dollars for the domain. He seems so
concerned about his business but with $15 million in 1999 dollars he could
have retired quite comfortably.

~~~
qilo
He wasn't being offered 15 millions in 1999.

~~~
pmarreck
He should have asked for that and then walked away from the table.

~~~
zaphar
He did ask for that and they countered with a lawsuit the same day.

~~~
pmarreck
I thought he refused to part with it at any price?

------
walrus01
does anybody remember the whitehouse.com porn site?

[https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=whi...](https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=whitehouse.com+porn&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

~~~
foobaw
Yes - this was such a common prank during my school years.

------
Method-X
I wonder why he didn't counter sue for damages. At least the article didn't
mention if he did or not.

~~~
Dolores12
from [0]: The court ordered NMC to pay $58,000 as cost under rule 68, this is
less than 2% of what the cost was to defend this case.

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

------
tgtweak
One thing that gets me every time this pops up... Nissan owned z.com and they
just sold it fairly recently to GMO of Japan...

How can you own a single letter domain name but not your own brand. To add
insult to injury they sold it for less than Facebook paid for fb.com.

------
mnm1
A massive failure of the court system and yet more proof, despite Nissan
Computer winning, that money wins in the end, even when the case is lost. Why
this wasn't thrown out immediately is beyond logic. The lesson for aspiring
business owners is that big money will hurt you even if you're in the right
and it's not even worth trying. I guess that really is the business lesson
everyone needs to learn today. Don't go against the big guys because there,
even winning is losing.

~~~
macspoofing
Nissan Motor didn't win. They don't own the domain. Who can quantify the
millions and millions of lost revenue and brand tarnishing that resulted from
people reading about this story or accidentally visiting nissan.com

In the end, Nissan Motor should own the domain and Uzi should have been fairly
compensated - i.e. they should have paid him the $15 million he initially
asked for.

~~~
mnm1
Right, they didn't win the court case. But their company wasn't ruined like
Nissan Computer was by the lawsuit. For fighting this case that they knew they
were in the wrong of, a case they knew they'd lose, if Uzi fought them, they
deserve every last bit of negative advertising and lost profits. Uzi didn't
want to sell. If they had been better at their business, they should have
grabbed the domain name first, but Nissan Motors was late to the market and
lost out. If they hadn't been a giant corporation, no doubt the case would
have been thrown out or settled, but they used the money to bully Uzi. They
deserve what they got. And the rest of us deserve to have a court system that
works for non millionaires ... But that's just wishful thinking.

~~~
macspoofing
>but they used the money to bully Uzi

And it cost them. I'm not on Nissan's side here. They should have engaged Uzi
in a good-faith negotiation. In the end, I think he would have sold for
something - because that would have been the right thing to do. Not only
because it would have made financial sense for him to do so, but because the
branding value of the domain is so high for a multi-national/multi-billion
dollar corporation compared to a small mom and pop outfit that it approaches
at least an ethical consideration. But they didn't do that, and all sides are
worse for it.

------
loggedinmyphone
Off-topic bilingual pun: In Japan, Nissan cars are considered female. As they
say: each Nissan she go.

------
kylec
While it’s unfortunate that the US legal system is very expensive to
participate in, and this is something a lot of larger litigants use to their
advantage against smaller litigants, the truth is this guy could have
transferred over the domain and walked away at any time. If he bankrupted
himself in this fight he has himself partially to blame.

~~~
maxxxxx
He is not to blame at all. This lawsuit should have been dismissed
immediately. Do you think he would have had a chance to sue Nissan the company
because it used a domain with this last name? It just shows that the system is
rigged for the big guys.

------
ThoAppelsin
What would you think about a compromise solution to the situation as the
domain nissan.com becoming an index page for the both parties?

A link to both nissancomputers.com and nissanusa.com could have been displayed
there side by side along with their logos. Their sides could switch each day,
to prevent any sort of prioritization.

Maintenance could be done by anyone. Changes on the index page could require
consent of the both parties.

The index page could include a checkbox, or after-choice-prompt to allow the
users to have their browsers automatically redirected to whichever site
whenever they visit the nissan.com again. It would then be like nissan.com
belongs to both of them, wouldn't it?

~~~
vasco
Or we could honor the fact that if a guy buys a domain he owns it until he
stops paying.

------
ThoAppelsin
As a sentient being, I also feel the urge to support an individual against a
company. And I am sure that finders-keepers is an intuition ingrained not to
just humans, but to the whole nature.

However, as I try taking this not-personal, and resolve this more logically
than just sentimentally, it becomes really hard to make any sense of the fact
that the domain nissan.com belongs a company that almost nobody knows (Nissan
Computers), when a significant fraction of the human population would
(falsely) assume that the domain belongs to another company (Nissan Motors) to
which they might even try to reach by directly typing "www.nissan.com" on
their browsers' address bar, without even searching for it on
Google/Bing/whatever.

In the end, the fact that [http://nissan.com/](http://nissan.com/) points to
somewhere else than Nissan Motors Company's (NMC) website is even detrimental
against the overall experience of the Internet's users. Almost nobody heading
to that website expects to see some place else than NMC's website. Even Uzi
Nissan would be very much unhappy about it, if it was not a website visit, but
a phone call. It is like a constant wrong-number situation.

~~~
ggm
They can buy it for what its worth to them, as a brand. Thats the nature of
First Come First Served domains, with equal justification. Just because Nissan
is big, does not mean they own the name entirely, over anyone else's prior
rights.

~~~
ThoAppelsin
The article explains it as if the nissan.com domain was priceless to Uzi
Nissan.

~~~
ggm
It was certainly worth as much as the legal cost to Nissan motors. Why should
Uzi Nissan be denied that implied value? Whatever else, it certainly wasn't
domain squatting as I understand it.

------
jinushaun
Probably an unpopular opinion here, but I’m with Nissan the car company on
this one. The general public expects visiting nissan.com to take them to a
website selling Nissan cars.

~~~
mythz
So the moment another company becomes popular they have automatic rights to
your existing family's business domain name? Is it only domain names they have
to rescind ownership of, or should they also be forced to change their
business name and dispose of any existing branding, signs and marketing
materials they have?

What's the family business then meant to do, cease operating their family
business under their generations-old family name?

~~~
khazhou
> So the moment another company becomes popular they have automatic rights to
> your existing family's business domain name? Is it only domain names they
> have to rescind ownership of, or should they also be forced to change their
> business name and dispose of any existing branding, signs and marketing
> materials they have?

None of that other stuff is relevant to domain name. The "Amazon" camping shop
in Pikesville, Ky doesn't need to change its business name (though they
probably should if they set up shop in Washington state).

> What's the family business then meant to do, cease operating their family
> business under their generations-old family name?

No, just take another domain name. Millions of people have probably landed on
nissan.com while trying to research a car, and been confused and frustrated in
disbelief. And this is because one guy with the name "Nissan" beat them to the
punch in the early domain-name grab. He could have just as easily taken
uzinissan.com and enjoyed his 11 hits a month on that domain.

~~~
namelost
So? Let them be confused and frustrated. The world's not going to end. Big
corporations have enough advantages without giving them rights that ordinary
folk don't have.

Say that I am a mediocre violin player. But I happen to own a rare
Stradivarius. A rich and successful violinist writes to me and asks to buy my
violin. I refuse his offer. So he sues me, and says to the court that because
he is _so_ famous and _so_ technically adept, the violin should rightfully
belong to him. Is that fair?

------
Theodores
The lesson here is to be cooperative and nice to people, with this being a two
way street. Neither Nissan was nice.

Nissan the company could have asked nicely before going in heavy with the
lawsuit.

Instead of the lawsuit they could have played the long game and just bought
the better URLs - nissan-cars.com, nissanUSA.com, nissan-usa.com, nissan-
colorado.com, nissan-kentucky.com and just buried the problem that way.

In time the domain would come up for renewal, in time the owner might give up
interest in owning it. In this instance, due to the surname, it is unlikely
that the Mr Nissan would just give it up, but if Nissan the company really did
not appear to be interested in the domain beyond a fair but reasonable price,
what could Mr Nissan do about it?

By pretending he is in a David vs Goliath struggle for freedom and democracy,
Mr Nissan has proven himself to be an idiot. He could look at his computer
service offerings and laugh at how unmarketable his services are. Nobody would
hire him except an old grandmother using a computer for the first time ever
and needing help to plug in a mouse. By no stretch of the imagination does Mr
Nissan offer goods/services that befit the marketplace.

Why is this?

Because he has decided to have his petty spat with the Nissan motor company.
His website is an embarrassing folly.

Another aspect of the folly is ego. If you have a common name that can be
confused with other things then you don't use it in the confusable form.
'nissan-computers.com' \- as proposed by Nissan was generous, 'a-b-nissan-
computers.com' with some initials at the front is fine. Or you use your street
name, or your cat's name. In putting your customer first why would you present
a confusing business name?

~~~
kw71
A thousand times yes. This has been over for almost two decades and he still
won't stop. What a crank.

