However, as mentioned, Amazon should have never allowed the site to become an affiliate. The first article of the agreement says that domains with their trademarks can’t participate. It doesn’t say that if for some reason affiliates operating domains with their trademarks pass their obviously deficient application review, applicants or affiliates will be forced to surrender their domains. I wouldn’t argue against their denying his application in the first place or discontinuing their agreement now.

Finally, the ACPA includes an exception to bad faith which is pretty broadly worded: that if the defendant even thinks their use is fair use, it can’t be bad faith.

“He’s not trying to dilute their brand power or market power; he’s reporting about their product.”

You automatically dilute someone’s brand by registering their marks as a domain. And he is/was trying to profit by increasing his affiliate revenue / andd now is obtaining Google adword revenue.

“He’s not selling anything, so he obviously doesn’t meet the requirement that he’s acting in bad faith to profit from the mark.” Diverting traffic is also proof of bad faith. Clearly, he is trying to divert traffic.

What if every affiliate of Amazon could register domains using their trademarks on the basis of fair use?

The whole idea behind setting up that site is probably to capture commissions from any sales of the Kindle (or anything from Amazon for that matter) and to capitalize on the buzz generated from the Kindle.

Having the word “Kindle” in the domain name is a well-known SEO technique. Without being able to promote Amazon links, the Kindle Report can try other means of monetization… that is, until Amazon forces him to give up the domain.

As a reminder, trademark law allows a nonowner of a trademark to use the mark to refer to the actual trademarked product or its source. In addition to protecting product criticism and analysis, United States law actually encourages nominative usage by competitors in the form of comparative advertising.

Due to a past situation that I had to deal with I would have to side with Amazon. It is extremely important to protect your brand. A few years ago I created a product that was sold online and shortly thereafter purchased a domain name that similar to mine. It turns out this person was also much better a SEO than myself, and his domain ranked much better than mine. His site absolutely destroyed my brand and led to many other copycat sites.

Sounds to me that while Jason is doing a service that Amazon should appreciate, he’s doing it in a way that is inconsistent with patent law and it’s quite reasonable for Amazon to ask him to stop.

It’s not “bullying” as much as that might make for a good headline. It’s defending the company trademark and if you check out uspto.gov you’ll find that Amazon could *lose* its trademark if it doesn’t “actively defend” its use in the marketplace.

Finally, one more observation, based on my own experience with these situations: the legal team that goes after possible trademark infringements has no communication with and is probably physically quite distant from the marketing department, and doubly so at a company like Amazon.

Myspace is doing the same thing, and it seems to be their way of protecting their brand… It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth when large companies with huge revenue have to go after small fish and force them to take their sites down… but I guess in an online world where people abuse trademarks, the companies have to protect what is rightfully theirs.