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Coke.CH - Koks oder Cola?

Is "coke.ch" A Violation of Coca-Cola's (tm)?

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/03/16/1732210&mode=nocomment

[ News ] Posted by Cliff on 20:17 21st March, 2000 from the yet-another-big-corp-vs-lil-domain-story dept. Confused asks: "I own currently in another country a domain called coke.ch which I had registered about two years ago (ch is for the suisse country). I thought at the time of registering the site of doing a site relating to the affects and some information about helping addicted cocaine users since a friend of mine died from it. Right now, the Coca-Cola company is wanting that name from me and have asked some lawyers in Switzerland to take charge of the case. What can I do when I don't think that I did anything wrong? Is there a way to fight this? Any suggestions would be helpful and appreciated." I can understand Coca-Cola wanting to protect their trademark, but is this going too far? (Read More)

"The word 'coke' in French refers to the drug cocaine ... and the words 'du pepsi' and 'du coca' are used for ordering soda such as Coca-Cola over there. So I registered 'coke' thinking that it was OK to use since the work coke doesn't refer to the Coca-Cola company over in Switzerland."

Let's face it folks...the word "coke" is slang. It's been a slang representation for both "Coca-Cola" and "cocaine" for as long as I can remember. Does a corporation have the right to trademark such slang? And if a word is trademarked before its inadvertent use in common language, what then? Must we all prefix a "(tm)" after using the word coke(tm) even if when we use the word coke(tm) we are not referring to what was trademarked, but the slang version? This is yet another case that might call for third-party resolution. As near as I can tell, this domain was not registered or used in bad faith. Therefore, as I understand it, Coca-Cola shouldn't have any rights to the domain. Or have I missed something?

Thoughts?

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