According to newsok.com, the University of Oklahoma has filed a federal lawsuit over the domain name, soonernetwork.com.
According to the story, the domain name is owned by Hugh Michael Glenn.
“The lawsuit alleges Glenn bought the domain name with the intent of selling it to OU at a profit, a process known as cybersquatting. The university is seeking an injunction barring Glenn from using any of OU’s trademarks in the future.
OU also is seeking $100,000 in damages, any profits Glenn has received from the website and rights to the soonernetwork.com domain name”.
“The lawsuit notes that Bob Barry Sr., longtime play-by-play announcer for OU football, referred to the network simply as “the Sooner Network.”
“On Monday afternoon, the website at the address soonernetwork.com appeared to be a service that connects Oklahomans with eldercare providers. According to the site, the network doesn’t charge patients or family members for the service”.
However since the domain name was registered by Mr. Glenn in 2010, Screenshots.com it has had a few different looks including this one from August 2012 which says Go Longhorns””” (One of Oklahoma traditional rivals has been the University of Texas who are the Longhorns”) The site that was up in August of last year also says the domain name is for sale and lists a phone number to call .
uhoh my University has made TheDomains! This seems pretty standard as they have the TM rights to “Sooner.” Also I haven’t read the lawsuit but $100k is pretty standard part of Lanham/ACPA isn’t it?
Roy
$100K are the damages provided by the statue for each violation (domain) under the ACPA.
MB, is there a trademark on it?
The Free dictionarty defines the literal meaning of Sooner as I know it:
1. A person who settled homestead land in the western United States before it was officially made available, in order to have first choice of location.
2. Sooner A native or resident of Oklahoma.
Since the guy has owned it he never made use the “Sooners” trademark that I can see – other than a Lonhorn logo – which is probably a TM infringement of the Texas Longhorns.
But the real issue here is this stuff has been over and tried in the Court and UDRP for over 10 years – what planet has this guy been on for the last 10 years.
Trademark is on Sooner in connection with the University of Oklahoma
About 1,480,000,000 results in google for *sooner*.com
A fair number of those will be domains with the word ‘sooner’ in it.
This guy must have done something else to piss off the uni.
“This guy must have done something else to piss off the uni.”
Yes – the TM infringing “Go Longhorns” logo – that competed with the Sooner’s football / sports product
That is like me setting up a card table at the main entrance to Google and selling / displaying Yahoo or Microsoft products and logos.
The healthcare site that is there now would have not been a problem – but to late, water under the bridge and bad faith intent is obvious – all this coupled with ACPA and UDRP have thrown out the 1st Amendment defense – and this guy is in trouble
Talking about bad faith, has anyone seen Microsofts new “Scroogled” campaign? A war is brewing………