Danish Court Orders Spanish Site Blocked Because It Uses Trademarked English Word 'Home' As Part Of Its Name

Glyn Moody — Mon, 7 Jan 2013 03:33:43 PST

Daft trademarking stories are common enough, but it's always fun to come across new variations on the theme. Netzpolitik points us to this story from Denmark, where a Spanish-owned property site called HomelifeSpain.com ran into trouble because the word "home" was trademarked in Denmark by the Danish property site home.dk. This resulted in the rather incredible remedy of the website itself being banned entirely. As Netzpolitik notes, this is classic function creep: such web blocks were introduced to fight -- you guessed it -- child pornography, and yet here they are being applied in the rather less serious matter of trademark infringement.

Moreover, it's hard to see why such a common word as "home" was allowed as a trademark in the first place. It's true it's in English, rather than Danish, but even so, trademark examiners would surely have known that granting one company an exclusive monopoly of the common English word "home" in Denmark for certain domains was bound to cause problems somewhere down the line, given the globalized nature of business today. The fact that a Spanish company is now being blocked there because of a Danish trademark granted on an English word proves the point nicely.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Streisand To Publish An Entire Book Detailing The Malibu Home She Once Wanted To Keep Very, Very Secret

Mike Masnick — Fri, 5 Jun 2009 18:22:00 PDT

Well, this is amusing. As you may know, a few years back, I coined the phrase "The Streisand Effect" to describe the situation where someone tries to force some content to be taken down, in an attempt to suppress it -- but, in doing so, winds up driving much more attention to the content. The name came from a lawsuit filed in 2003 by Barbara Streisand against environmentalist/photographer Ken Adelman, who had been photographing the entire California coast from a helicopter in order to document coastal erosion. Of course, in trying to have her photo taken off of his site, it generated significantly more interest in that particular photograph. Streisand eventually lost the lawsuit and was even ordered to pay nearly $200,000 in legal fees.

Of course, since then, the phrase "The Streisand Effect" has become fairly popular and in common usage -- and has been featured in Forbes, Associated Press articles and on NPR's All Things Considered -- and has even been translated into other languages. All because Streisand didn't want a distant photo of her Malibu home on the internet.

Thus, it's with some level of irony that we find out (thanks Stephen!) that Streisand is now putting together a book about the architecture of that very home including numerous photos of the home and property. Perhaps Ken Adelman should sue for helping her to realize that there was "demand" for photos of her Malibu home.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Techdirt. Stories filed under "home"

Danish Court Orders Spanish Site Blocked Because It Uses Trademarked English Word 'Home' As Part Of Its Name

Streisand To Publish An Entire Book Detailing The Malibu Home She Once Wanted To Keep Very, Very Secret