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As you may know from the "Supercars" thread, I've been designing a new game lately and conducting research, because I know absolutely nothing about cars, lol. Anyway, I've become fascinated with how a number of car manufacturers are allowing people to virtually build cars on their websites to see how they'd look with various options. I decided to type nissan.com into my address bar to give them a go. But what I found wasn't one of the world's largest automakers... it was a small family-owned computer shop in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Here's where it gets interesting. Nissan Motors is currently suing Nissan computers for a staggering $10,000,000. The charges: Trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and cyber-squatting, amongst other claims. The battle between the corporate behemoth and the mom-and-pop-computer-shop has been going on since 1999, and has made it all of the way to the supreme court. And somehow this has never, to my knowledge anyway, gotten media play.

The President of Nissan Computers is named Uzi Nissan, who came to the United States in 1976. He ironically opened a car dealership, called "Nissan Foreign Cars," in 1980, and had even sold cars made by Nissan, who were then known as Datsun. In 1987 he started an import/ export business called "Nissan International," again using his real-life last name, during a time when Nissan was largely still known as Datsun, but were just starting to establish their new name. He started "Nissan Computer Corp" in 1991, and registered www.nissan.com in 1994 to promote his newest business venture. In 1995 he got "a service mark registration for Nissan and my logo from the State of North Carolina," and then later acquired www.nissan.net in 1996 to offer various internet services.
All of this information is available here, on Nissan Computers' website.

I'm sure no one will be surprised, but I'm definitely taking the side of Nissan Computers here. He'd started to establish the name Nissan long before Datsun did, and he used these websites for legitimate business endeavors. And seeing as how his last name is actually Nissan, I highly doubt he acquired these websites with any intention of shutting out Nissan, particularly in a time when there were so many critics of the Internet or its future potential... I mean really, beyond Ray Kurzweil, how many people could see where the net would get to a decade later, back in 1994? Anyway, figured I'd bring this to everyone's attention and find out what you guys think about it.

Nissan Computers deserves to win from the evidence you just showed us. I think Nissan cars needs to change their name

Based on the story on the site absolutely, it seems like Nissan computers have entitlement to the domains, and they must if they've held them this long. I'm glad they still have them after such a long legal ordeal. This type of behavior from big companies over domain names is disgraceful, they use there deep pockets to try and get there own way even if the domains are owned by someone who is equally if not more so entitled to them.

I am all for Nissan computers. 10 million is a lot of money. Hope one day this will all end for them.

damn the corrupt corporations of the world damn yoooooouuuuu!!!!!!!!

I'm not a fan of the "corporate vs little guy" scenario, since that's almost never the case that any side is actually evil, and in some cases it's the little guy being the jerk in the whole relationship.

That's all I'm saying, I'm staying out of this one

According to wikipedia Nissan where selling high end cars under the Nissan name in the 60s.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datsun#Datsun_in_the_American_market

But Nissan Motor's arguement of having an established name is supported with claims of being popularly known as Nissan prior to Uzi Nissan starting his business, and as far as I can remember they were still known as Datsun back then. Especially when he first started getting into business in the US back in 1980, they were making those cool little hatchback sports cars back then.

I checked the status of the case. It appears that the case is ended as of a few weeks ago in the trial court, and that Mr. Nissan can continue using his name on the computer website. There might be a appeal (there was a prior appeal in the course of the case), but I think not.

too-bad, so-sad for Nissan Motor imo hehe. I dunno, maybe this guy is just highly charismatic or something, but I genuinely feel like he had no intention of cyber-squatting and was just starting up his business, hehe.

He has some pretty cheap computers on there, lower grade though. I'm wondering, is Nissan Computer still making sales or is he keeping the site up out of defiance? Take a look at his prices and systems lol.

I read through quite a few of the papers in the suit. I subscribe to PACER because I'm a trademark/copyright lawyer by trade. The problem is that he was using the site at one point to run car advertisements, which would suggest to some that he was deliberately seeking to cause what is called "initial confusion". Secondly, Nissan offered to purchase the domain from him. Some might suspect him to have gotten a bit greedy. Over the years I am sure he had to spend several hundred thousand dollars on legal fees. I think he recouped only perhaps 50 thousand dollars is costs. Nissan motors spent a lot, he spent a lot, and the lawyers earned a lot. (Which doesn't mean that I do; I always discourage litigation).

I was hoping for Nissan Motors to win

A trademark is designated to an area and normally you have to have a logo to make it unique, text alone is not normally unique enough for common nouns and verbs.

There has been a test case similar Ford who made the Granada car v Granada TV studios. There was no case to answer because the brands are in different markets.

Also Easy Jet v Easy Pizza again no case to answer for.

Businesses with money will try it on just because they have bored lawyers on staff to do such things. They call it defending their brand, i would call it intimidation, after all they are supposed to know the law so should know tey are in the wrong!

Look at the case of McDonalds they claim that no-one else in the restraunt business can use the Mc or Mac. Sux if your Scotish restraunt owner, but I'm not sure how well it would stand up in court is someone fought it as it's a very common noun in Scotland!

Some bogus lawyers claiming to be acting for Microsoft were sending threats to ayone with 'soft' on the end of their domain name. Being an owner of ThomasSoft myself I pointed out to them that Micro and Soft are short for Microcomputer and Software and are not allowed as trademarks because they are both terms commonly used in this market area. Not heard anything since.