FC: Why not to buy Volvo cars? Volvo won't back down from domain claim

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Previous Politech message:
http://www.politechbot.com/p-04830.html

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Subject: FW: volocars.com  (KMM321944V38895L0KM)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 22:57:01 +0900
Message-ID: <716FC52867369B4B9142EDC3924C6A3A7732E3 () tkwexqa02 ms com>
From: <Renfield.Kuroda () morganstanley com>
To: <declan () well com>

I sent a comment from Ford's (Volvo's) website volvocars.com and got the
following prompt response.
Wow, the corporate arrogance is overwhelming. They obviously care more
about their precious brand than they care about the damage to their
image, the weakness of their argument about customers being confused, or
the obviously 'right thing'.

Regards,
r e n

-----Original Message-----
From: Customer Service [mailto:customerservice () volvocars com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 10:48 PM
To: Kuroda, Renfield (IT)
Subject: Re: volocars.com (KMM321944V38895L0KM)


Dear Renfield:

Thank you for contacting us regarding the recent articles about the
domain name of the Volo Car Museum.

We wish everyone to know that Volvo has not asked the museum to change
their name or any other aspect of their business.  We have only asked
that they modify/change their Internet web IP to something that will not
confuse web visitors searching for Volvo car information.

The values and qualities the Volvo brand expresses are what make the
company unique. From the very beginning, safety and quality have stood
at the heart of the development of all Volvo products and services. It
is on these values and qualities that the Volvo corporate identity,
brand position and legal status have been founded. Today's core brand
values of quality, safety and care for the environment remains central
to Volvo's brand position. They express what Volvo believes in as a
company and will ultimately help it to survive.

We have been in discussions with Volo Car Museum for some months, trying
to reach a solution.  Since we have not been able to come to a mutual
agreement, we have asked for an independent ruling as to both parties
positions. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) located
in Geneva, Switzerland will arbitrate this matter shortly. At this time,
there is no ruling from WIPO.

Our position has been and will always be to protect our brand in a
manner consistent with customer's expectations and to remain true to our
founding set of values.

We thank you for taking the time to share your comments and allowing us
to respond.

Sincerely,
Chris Horgan
Volvo Cars of North America





Original Message Follows:
------------------------
What, exactly, is it with your lawyers? Do you honestly believe you do
ANY good -- Ford's, your customers', internet users' in general -- with
such frivolous nonsense as to hassle a small-town Illinois car museum?

I recommend you fire all your overpaid lawyers and replace them with
touchy-feely PR people who should immediately start apologizing, because
what you have on hand is not a legal issue, it's an assine Big Corporate
America Destroys Its Own Image nightmare.

Congratulations: I will now absolutely, positively, never ever buy a
Volvo or any other motor vehicle from the Ford family. And I am not
alone.

Regards,
renfield kuroda
proud to not own a Volvo or a Ford


ascii: r e n f i e l d
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Enterprise & Client Technologies

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From: "Thomas Junker" <tjunker () tjunker com>
To: declan () well com
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 02:22:00 -0500
Subject: Re: FC: VolvoCars.com tries to grab VoloCars.com museum website
Reply-to: Thomas Junker <tjunker () tjunker com>
Message-ID: <3EE69248.2405.7AFE882@localhost>
Priority: normal

Declan,

This Volvo vs. Volo nonsense is completely over the top.  I'd like
to suggest to the community of people interested in the kind of
abuse reported to have been engaged in by Volvo in this matter that
we try to cooperate in formulating an aggressive response designed
to make a chilling example of one of the next gaggles of lawyers and
their client who come waddling down this road trying to uproot and
hijack the public persona of a pre-existing business.

In a sane world there can be *no* question of bad faith on the part
of a business like the Volo Auto Museum, reportedly in business long
before Volvo cars were first imported into the U.S. and decades
before there was a World Wide Web.

In a sane world, Volvo's lawyers would end up disbarred and Volvo
would end up hit with such a large countersuit judgment that it
would have to liquidate to pay off even part of it.

In a sane world, every other lawyer involved in IP games would make
a note to himself to never, *ever* try such a stunt.

In a sane world, the consequences for doing what Volvo is reported
to have done would be *so* severe that law schools would teach
budding lawyers to strictly avoid such nonsense.

What about some good minds getting together to lay out a strategy
that could, with the right case, deliver a stunning,
catastrophically overwhelming counterblow to the IP ex post facto
hijackers like Volvo?  I don't know whether or not it is too late
for Volo Auto Museum, but from the reports they sound like the
perfect case to take to the wall.

Why should multi-billion-dollar awards only occur in Stupid Smoker
Suits (TM)?  Why should spilling hot coffee in one's own lap be
worth millions while innocent victims of wholly illegitimate IP
hijackings can't or don't get their licks in?  What's wrong with
this picture?

The whole field of IP is getting far out of control.  Incredibly,
prior art is now regularly patented.  Companies like Volvo go to the
WIPO to *steal* domains and trade names from innocent businesses
established long before their attackers.  Software and things like
obvious and inevitable transaction managment methodologies are being
granted patents.  I knew there was trouble ahead when someone
applied [in the 1960s?] for a patent on decimal-binary conversions,
which *all* of us had been doing for years as a matter of course and
regularly asked programming job candidates to demonstrate as
evidence of at least rudimentary familiarity with programming.
Decimal-binary conversions had not only been around as long as
computers, they were considered *obvious*, merely intuitive and
inevitable implementations of the number base arithmetic.

Something must be done.  I suggest that some organization and effort
are required in two areas:

  1. Making it overwhelmingly costly to assert fallacious and
     false claims of improper and "bad faith" trade name or
     patent usage against innocent entities with prior existence,
     prior registrations, prior usage, or the existence of
     prior art.

     What cost in money would make Volvo dearly sorry they had
     every attacked the Volo Auto Museum?  $500 million?  $5
     billion?  $50 billion?  What cost would get their executives
     and directors sacked?  What cost would cause their shares
     to tank?

     How could appropriate, overwhelming costs be imposed?
     Through aggressive litigation?  Through marketplace actions?
     Through new, killer fines to deter future weasel attacks?

  2. Seeking legislative measures to kill abuses before they are
     hatched.  Individuals who are charged with relatively
     innocuous things these days are subject to decades of prison
     and millions in fines.  How much more damaging are gross
     assaults on small businesses by 500-lb gorillas such as Volvo?
     Should they not be subjected to prison terms for the lawyers
     and executives and *billions* in fines and restitution?

This problem isn't going to be solved defensively, or by pansy-ass
warding off of the growing onslaught of mindless IP lawyers acting
for irresponsible and clueless corporate clients.  If it can be
solved at all it will only be so by aggressive, proactive planning
and action, preferably on multiple fronts.  A case such as the Volo
Auto Museum's should be seized on by everyone who considers the new
IP trends dangerous to business and humanity, and the defense and
counterattack by the Museum and on the Museum's behalf should be
treated as an *offensive* against against the forces abusing IP law
and concepts.  When a case like the Museum's comes up, it should be
viewed as an opportunity to utterly destroy the abuser, not merely
fend him off.  Volvo should be hurt *so* badly it ends up in the
Corporate Intensive Care Unit, figuratively bleeding, with broken
bones, brain damage, and penniless.

We should take a cue from the Feds in this:  play for keeps, go for
the throat, and give no quarter.

Regards,

Thomas Junker
tjunker () tjunker com




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