Comic artist Jeph Jacques was so amused when the .horse top level domain was created he decided to make a new website: walmart.horse. The site portrayed an unexplainably funny picture of a horse in front of a Walmart store (above).
Walmart didn’t get the joke. In March, they sent Jacques a cease-and-desist letter telling him that the site infringed their trademark. Jacques responded, saying his site was fair use because the horsey site was an “obvious parody.” If Walmart had other animals it wanted to add to the website, he added cheekily, “I would happily comply!”
Two months later, Walmart had enough of this horsing around. The company didn’t drop the issue, instead filing papers with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and initiating a domain name dispute. It’s a procedure that’s meant to knock out cybersquatters.
Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments
