February 18, 2016

Jeb and Trump Duke it Out Over a Domain


The Town Hall isn't the only place Jeb and Trump are fighting this week. Go to jebbush.com. See what happens. Surprised to see this:

Trump Website

We knew Trump fought dirty, but we didn't know he fought with trademarks too. If you're looking to support Jeb!, you now have to visit jeb2016.com:

Jeb Website

Someone in camp Jeb! forgot to renew Jeb's domain name registration for jebbush.com when it expired last November. Team Trump noticed, registered the domain, and redirected the domain to donaldjtrump.com.

A couple questions for Jeb: 1) How did nobody notice the domain consisting of his own name is expiring? 2) What has been done to get it back? I suppose this isn't surprising considered his application for registration of JEB! was abandoned for failure to file a response to an office action.

Jeb2016

Technically, JEB BUSH is a trademark for, among other things, political campaign services. Even without a registration of JEB BUSH, Jeb can still claim rights in his trademark and file a domain name dispute proceeding to attempt to get the domain returned to its rightful owner. The redirect of jebbush.com to donaldjtrump.com could allegedly be domain name infringement, though Jeb might have a hard time arguing that consumers are confused into thinking Donald Trump supports or endorses Jeb.

Though Trump has seemingly won this trademark battle, it remains to be seen whether he'll win the war over the Republican ticket.