Cable News Network L.P. v. CNNews.com
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| Cable News Network L.P. v. CNNews.com | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Court | United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia |
| Full case name | Cable News Network L.P. v. CNNews.com |
| Decided | September 18, 2001 |
| Citation | 162 F.Supp.2d 484 |
| Holding | |
| The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act requires a show of bad faith. | |
| Case opinions | |
| Majority | T. S. Ellis III |
| Laws applied | |
| Cybersquatting, Lanham Act, United States trademark law | |
Cable News Network L.P. v. CNNews.com, 162 F.Supp.2d 484 (2001), was a trademark law case of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, over the use of a registered trademark owned by an American company in the web address of a foreign company. The court ruled that a foreign firm's use of an American trademark in a web address could be a violation of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, but such a violation requires a show of bad faith.
Cable News Network had owned the American trademark for the acronym "CNN" since 1980, and in the late 1990s registered the domain name "cnn.com" for its website. In 1999, Maya Online Broadband Network of China, a subsidiary of Shanghai Online Broadband Network Co. Ltd., registered the domain name "cnnews.com" with Network Solutions for use worldwide. The Chinese firm claimed that the "cn" in the domain name utilized a widely-known abbreviation for China, while Cable News Network claimed that the first three letters of the offending domain name violated its trademark for the "cnn" acronym and could cause confusion among Internet users.[1] The Chinese firm noted that it planned to use the "cnnews.com" site only in China and with content only in the Chinese language, and that this would not cause confusion because few people in China were familiar with the American CNN.[1]