Recently I found myself looking for local retail stores online. RadioShack, walmart, fossil, kmart, all in hopes of finding a new watch.
The thing i do is type in www.radoshack.com, which happens to be a misspelling. Turns out that RadioShack disliked the misspelled site to the extent of sending a harassing letter to the sites owner(read that letter here). Quote from letter:
"It recently came to RadioShack's attention that you have registered and are using www.radoshack.com as a World Wide Web domain name in violation of the Anti-cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999. Furthermore, you are intentionally trading on the goodwill of RadioShack by using a trademark that is confusingly similar to RADIOSHACK. Your misuse of our famous trademark, combined with the lack of any semblance of legitimate reason for you to register this domain name indicates a bad faith intent to profit from the famous RADIOSHACK trademark
It is clear that www.radoshack's use of this misspelling of our trademark and domain name is intended to and actually does confuse and misdirect customers who mistype RadioShack's website address. This misuse of RadioShack's trademark is a classic example of dilution by blurring. This dilution is further exacerbated by the fact that your web site also offers electronic merchandise. This type of action commonly called typosquatting is actionable under federal law and causes you to be liable to RadioShack in every state in which the misdirected users have made purchases. Your activities are unlawful and constitute unfair competition, intentional trademark infringement, trademark dilution, false designation of origin and cybersquatting."
The site owner sent this letter back to RadioShack.
Conclusion: The main problem with the belly achers at RadioShack is the incompitence of thier customers or people who use the internet in general. That problem being idiots that type in the wrong website address and complain they cant find what they are looking for.
What radioshack wants ICAAN to do is, any domain name that resembles radioshack.com or is a misspelling of radioshack.com, redirect them to http://www.radioshack.com. Why would they want users dumb enough to cry about not finding a site they cant type correctly? Because these are the people that will buy their over priced junk.
That doesnt make me an idiot, I decided to go elsewhere, not because I couldnt find the site, its because radioshack sucks goat balls. |