
Why Nissan.com Isn’t a Car Website - Flopsy
http://www.yalelawtech.org/ip-in-the-digital-age/why-nissan-com-isn%E2%80%99t-a-car-website/
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jusben1369
Lost in this overview (and I couldn't really tell the point of the overview)
are the probably 10 000 + people per year who go to this site by mistake. It's
odd to me that Nissan didn't just offer him those 7 figures worth of legal
fees and solve it (or maybe they did to no effect)

~~~
badclient
I've actually met the guy and did some contract work for him. After hearing
the story from his mouth, what stuck with me is his utter dislike for the
Nissan CEO and Arabs. He seemed very passionate about Israel and cited
Nissan's Arab CEO as a huge part of why he dislikes that company.

~~~
cju
It's quite strange to see Carlos Ghosn described as an Arab. As far as I know,
he has never spoke publicly about Israël.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ghosn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ghosn)

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ceejayoz
Why would one's status as an Arab depend on public statements about Israel?

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cju
If I understand badclient correctly, the (alleged) attitude of M. Nissan
towards Arabs and Israël comes from his problems with M. Ghosn. I'm just
saying that if it's the case, it make no sens.

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cdcarter
Other way around. His attitude towards Ghosn/Nissan Motors comes from his
problems with Arabs and his feelings on Israel.

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laurent123456
> a final injunction which allowed Nissan Computer Corporation to maintain
> control of the domains Nissan.com and Nissan.net so long as it neither
> advertised nor mentioned/made disparaging comments about Nissan Motor.

First thing I see on nissan.com is a massive "Nissan's motor lawsuite against
us" with crossed Nissan logos and "it could happen to you too", then a massive
ad below this. Doesn't Nissan have a case that not only he doesn't respect his
side of the bargain but he's obviously using Nissan's popularity for his own
benefit?

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abjr
No. He no longer has to refrain from posting or linking to disparaging remarks
about Nissan.

"Injunctive relief may not restrain Nissan Computer from placing links on
nissan.com and nissan.net to other sites that post negative commentary about
Nissan Motor; to this extent, the relief granted is overbroad, reaches non-
commercial speech, and runs afoul of the FTDA and the First Amendment."

Source: Last page of
[http://www.citizen.org/documents/CourtofAppealsRulingNissanM...](http://www.citizen.org/documents/CourtofAppealsRulingNissanMotorvNissanComputer.pdf)

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fsck--off
Wow. I think the source code belongs in The Daily WTF. Just look at this gem:

    
    
      <form name="menuform4">
      <p>
      <select name="menu4" 
      onChange="window.open(menuform4.menu4.options[menuform4.menu4.selectedIndex].value);
      return false;">
      <option value="http://www.nissan.com" selected>People's Opinions &nbsp;</option>
      <option value="http://www.digest.com/people/page_1.shtml">Page 1</option>
      <option value="http://www.digest.com/people/page_2.shtml">Page 2</option>
      <option value="http://www.digest.com/people/page_3.shtml">Page 3</option>
      
      (Snipped about 500 lines)
      
      <option value="http://www.digest.com/people/page_503.shtml">page 503</option>
      <option value="http://www.digest.com/people/page_504.shtml">page 504</option>
      <option value="http://www.digest.com/people/page_505.shtml">page 505</option>
      </select>
      </form>
                  </font></strong></b>
                  </td>
                </tr>
              </table>

~~~
8ig8
True, but also keep in mind the site is still up with this spike in traffic.

Must be Varnish, Nginx, CDN edge servers, sprites, gzip, pre-fetching and
efficient CSS selectors.

~~~
sgt
I'm not sure if everyone sees your sarcasm here...

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kayoone
I simply do not understand why Nissan Motorcompany dont just offer the guy a
good pile of money. He has all the rights to use the domain, as its his name,
and simply bought it first.

That or spend millions and a decade on lawsuits that lead nowhere...

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brazzy
> He has all the rights to use the domain, as its his name, and simply bought
> it first.

Neither of those would be sufficient. The decisive factor is that he's
actually operating a legitimate business under that name.

~~~
StavrosK
How is that a factor? That means that anyone can take my domain by registering
a company with the same name and suing me for it.

~~~
jpatokal
No, they need to pass the three-step test:

* The domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights;

* The registrant does not have any rights or legitimate interests in the domain name; and

* The registrant registered the domain name and is using it in "bad faith".

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Domain-Name_Dispute-
Res...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Domain-Name_Dispute-
Resolution_Policy#Process)

~~~
StavrosK
Ah, right, so the decisive factor of the GP is not whether the guy is running
a legitimate business, it's whether the guy is using the domain to mislead
people into thinking he's Nissan cars.

So, for example, a personal site with a few family photos of someone called
Nissan, or whose nickname is Nissan, or who just liked the word, would not be
infringing, so they couldn't take it away, correct?

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ytjohn
Correct. They couldn't take it away, but (like Nissan Motors tried) they could
make it financially difficult for you to keep it.

Now, if Mr. Nissan started doing something like setting up a car forum and
reviews on his site, he would get into very dangerous territory.

Right now (at least for me) nissan.com has an advertisement for an insurance
agency that sells car insurance. I would say that is about as close as Mr.
Nissan can come to blurring the line to car.

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IgorPartola
A friend of mine operated a movie review site that mentioned Netflix in the
name. Netflix sued him, but settled out of court by having him change the
name, and buying the original domain for a few thousand dollars. They then let
the domain expire.

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glennon
Since Nissan is the only major international company unable to acquire their
first choice of domain, it appears an outlier. The lesson perhaps is that the
market, coupled with the dispute resolution system, works well with respect to
web domains.

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pbreit
The article inexplicably fails to mention if Nissan [car company] ever simply
offered up a large amount of money to transfer over the domain. It's pretty
human nature to dig in when you are attacked.

~~~
jdeibele
It would be interesting to know how the process would go - if he just accepted
an offer, then Nissan might take him to court saying he was squatting on the
name. Or he might be OK if they approached him first. IANAL.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting)

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le205
How much traffic do you think they actually lose by not having Nissan.com? I
would have thought as soon as someone looking for Nissan cars visits that URL,
they would realise it was not the right site, then try the ccTLD version i.e.
Nissan.co.uk, or simply search "Nissan" in their search engine of choice.

It's a bit like Google AdWords - some choose to bid on their own brand
keywords, but are they actually gaining incremental visitors, or just spending
budget on acquiring traffic that would otherwise arrived for free anyway?

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comatose_kid
If only he had gotten the domain for his first name, he wouldn't have to worry
about legal issues.

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itazula
Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. was founded in 1934. See
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motor_Company#Nissan_Mot...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motor_Company#Nissan_Motor_founded_in_1934)
And the word "Nissan" was used before that as a stock market abbreviation in
Japan. The name Nissan, however, was probably not well-known outside of Japan.
Mr. Nissan had probably never heard of the company. He was first to register
the domain name, and presumably Nissan "the company" had the same opportunity
at the time. But it is disturbing to read comments such as this on a page
([http://www.digest.com/people/page_1.shtml](http://www.digest.com/people/page_1.shtml))
linked to from his home page:

"Mr. Nissan,

I congratulate you, and thank you, for your perseverance in standing up for
what is honorable and legitimate, for each of us and our children. NMC's
attempt to leverage their size and importance (as it is the Asian way), will
not be tolerated. I will post your information for everyone I know to read and
boycott their products."

Boycott! Wow.

After reading several such posts, I wonder if the posters realize that Nissan
has factories in the U.S.

Someday, I speculate that the current nissan.com will be subject to a cyber
attack in a case of mistaken (or "mistaken") identity. What goes around, comes
around.

So, while Mr. Nissan has the rights of "first dibs," he should realize that
real damage is being done, and that he is fanning flames that do not speak to
the "better angels of our nature."

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8ig8
Here's the site Uzi put up regarding the lawsuit. Last updated October 17,
2007...

[http://ncchelp.org/](http://ncchelp.org/)

Edit: Here's the original PR...

[http://web.archive.org/web/20000510174513/http://www.ncchelp...](http://web.archive.org/web/20000510174513/http://www.ncchelp.org/)

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srathi
There is a similar story about Armani brand and a person named A.R. Mani.

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jsumrall
I looked at nissan.com, and its a shame that the site is basically internet
trash and lame ads.

~~~
damian2000
It looks like it was created in FrontPage 98. That said, the buttons on the
left work and he is actually running a small business selling computer
products and services (such as programming @ $90/hr).

~~~
okwa
The HTML source says FrontPage 4.0, but Wikipedia says there was no version 4
[1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FrontPage#Versions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_FrontPage#Versions)

~~~
yuhong
FrontPage 4.0 is FrontPage 2000. I know because I remember using it.

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Theodores
The design of nissan.com takes me back to the days before the '.gif' patent
war.

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quaffapint
Used to work for a credit card company, MBNA. They wanted mbna.com, which was
owned by Mercedes Benz, North America. Not so amazingly enough, hand Mercedes
a million or so and voilà we now had mbna.com, and why Mercedes is now
mbusa.com.

~~~
smcl
You might mean "voila", not "wala"

~~~
quaffapint
Yea, that would be a wee bit more accurate.

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robflynn
What was the situation with Dodge? I can remember in the early-late 90s (heh,
1997is?) that dodge.com belonged to some financial group. The actual Dodge car
company had 4adodge.com, I believe.

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barking
Nobody remembers urls any more (if they ever did).

If I type the word nissan into the address bar on IE, firefox, chrome or opera
I get a page full of links to the motor company.

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felipelalli
Domain isn't important anymore:
[http://lmgtfy.com/?q=nissan](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=nissan)

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ebbv
This post is clickbait with basically zero content. The story of Nissan.com is
well known to anyone who's been around the web for long. After all the battle
started in the '90s.

This article is saying "The web is important! Nissan Motor Company wants to
own nissan.com!"

No shit.

~~~
k3n
I found it very informative, I mean Wikipedia[1] only gives a scant 140-ish
word overview of the subject (and basically the same thing on the page for
Nissan Computer itself), and though it does give 3 references, 2 of those are
PDF's from the court judgements and the 3rd is an expired link to the USPTO.
Oh yeah, Nissan.com[2] actually contains the most information, though it looks
biased and sensational (to be expected). Otherwise, I'm not finding just a
whole lot of recent information about this out there. I see a Wired article
from 2001, and a Salon article from 2002, but other than that the chatter is
few and far between.

Meanwhile, the site that OP's article was posted on is "the course website for
the suite of law & technology courses at Yale University offered by Elizabeth
Stark and Brad Rosen" (which is apparently CPSC 183, 184, 185 at Yale
University). Publish date of the piece was 2011. So as far as sources go, I'm
not sure how much better you could get than this. Not even a single ad, and
right under 500 words, which is a nice size for a short take on the subject.

1\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan#Nissan_Motor_Co_v._Nissa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan#Nissan_Motor_Co_v._Nissan_Computer_Corporation)

2\.
[http://www.nissan.com/Digest/The_Story.php](http://www.nissan.com/Digest/The_Story.php)

~~~
mateja
"The court ordered NMC to pay $58,000 as cost under rule 68, this is less then
2% of what the cost was to defend this case."

It has cost Nissan Computer $3M to defend itself? For a local PC repair shop?
Either he's highly principled or just lying.

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felipelalli
Domain isn't important since Google.

