This is the story that I had read. It's not like the basic facts are some great
mystery.
Ellen Rony wrote:
> Both of these landmark cases are profiled in some detail in The Domain Name
> Handbook, pages 302 - 309.
>
> MTV came first, as Adam Curry registered the domain name in June 1993 and
> MTV requested he formally surrender the name on January 19, 1994 and sued
> Curry in May 1994. From my reading of the documents I could find online,
> Curry registered the name because he thought it would provide an
> interesting way of introducing MTVs progrmming. He incorporated it into
> his on air activities, for example telling viewers that they could email
> their MTV Valentine video dedications to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and their answers to
> trivia questios at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Given the chain of events, there's
> some evidence that MTV did not get interested in the domain name until
> after Curry began attracting a high volume of visitors tothe site.
"Some?" There is very good evidence of this. Curry was not initially motivated by
a desire to infringe--he was helping MTV. These kinds of informal, mutually
beneficial relationships develop all the time in the real world. If someone
decides to be a jerk about it, however, then pure legal reasoning applies, and
from a purely legal point of view, Curry was bound to lose, because the law
doesn't care much about intentions or mutually beneficial relationships.
Especially given the resource imbalance between the plaintiff and the defendant,
it is easy for lawyers to cast doubts upon perfectly normal and reasonable
actions.
It would be nice to see Schwimmer descend to the level of us mere mortals and
admit it:
"Yeah, I know Curry wasn't doing anything wrong. I got paid by the plaintiff to
grab a valuable resource away from him, because MTV suddenly understood the
latent value of the domain name. Never should have gotten away with it, but we
did. That's why we get paid big bucks!"
> MTV could have taken a non-combative approach and said no harm, no foul, and
> actually paid their former VDJ for promoting the network's activities
> through this new (at the time) medium called the Internet. To my knowledge,
> MTV did not challenge Metro Visions, registrant of MTV.NET or Mountain View
> High School, registrant of MTVIEW.COM
Given the early nature of the legal conflict, it was clearly inappropriate for
Schwimmer to assert that Curry was an infringer and that he (Schwimmer) had
superior knowledge of the case and that the rest of us should shut up or go read
an inaccessible box of materials. If there's any substantive way he can challenge
this account, let him speak now or concede that there is more to this case than
simple infringement.
--MM
