jeff barringer

OnlineHobbyist.com, Inc., owner and operator of the popular Austin-based
kingsnake.com online community, has filed a lawsuit in US District Court
in Austin Texas, citing trademark infringement, dilution, and
cyberpiracy, regarding the use of the domain name kingsnakes.com.

To review the complaint as filed please go to:

http://www.kingsnake.com/lawsuit.pdf
this requires the Adobe Acrobat Reader

OnlineHobbyist will issue both a press release and a statement on
Thursday March 4, 2004, on the kingsnake.com web site.

While we appreciate and welcome input from our users, sponsors, and
advertisers, we ask that if you want to discuss this issue publicly, you
do so on the public USENET group rec.pets.herp. This is a message system
that is not owned, operated, or moderated by any commercial entity, and
is free of owner/operator-induced bias, moderation, or editing. We ask
that you do not discuss this issue on private boards such as
kingsnake.com or others, so that other web community owners and
operators do not incur a legal liability from messages posted by users.

We hope that the public will withold their judgement until all the
issues and facts are presented by both sides to the court.

Court documents are a matter of public record and will
be available as they are accepted by the court.

rec.pets.herp may be accessed using Google's Groups interface at
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=rec.pets.herp

re

Great, thats what we need. A shit-flinging contest on rec.pet.herps by
idiots who never post otherwise.
-Ryan/

fr0glet

Yeah, note that NONE of the regular RPH'ers have responded to these
threads.

Ah well, that's what we get for being both public and unmoderated.

fr0glet

chaoscat

Eh, no offense, but I wish this whole thing would just go to rest...

-cat

chris mcmartin

You want input? I think the lawsuit is petty and frivolous. How can you
trademark the common name of an animal? That'd be like trying to copyright
zebra.com. the website www.kingsnakes.com looks nothing like
www.kingsnake.com; in fact, at the top of the home page it says it's
specifically for the discussion of kingsnakes (and milksnakes).

Since I also frequent www.kingsnake.com, I wonder how long it will take
before I'm banned due to my comments here. Seems to be what happens to
people with opinions other than Jeff's.
--
Chris
http://www.mcmartinville.com

shaun burns

It is not the name of the animal it self they are copy righting but the name
of the website. Because if www.kingsnakes.com was allowed to continue
www.kingsnake.com would lose money and customers.

patrick alexander

Well, kingsnakes.com is a different name for a website than
kingsnake.com. They can't copyright names they don't own and don't use!

Go look at kingsnakes.com--it's not a commercial website. How can
it be competing commercially with kingsnake.com?

Patrick Alexander

clairidge

Dearest Father in Heaven, how I WISH this is what I had to worry about
in my life!

Anyone up for judging a maturity contest, on a scale of one to ten?

--------
Barbara

boned2001

,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,
does jeffb think he is the only one allowed to profit from reptile
"portal"website as he calls it ,,get real!,,same scenario has been
prooven isn our court
system,,mcdonlad&jackinthebox,,walmart&Kmart,,,is jack the clown
back?are ther other marts besides wal-?,,its called free enterprise
jeffb,if ever there was a frivilous lawsuit this it IMHO,,,,,pathetic
thomas davis

chris mcmartin

I would like to see demonstrable evidence of how kingsnake.com has lost
money and "customers" (advertisers?) due to kingsnakes.com's existence.