Domain Dispute

A dispute over the domain name designsondemand.org has been going
on for approximately two weeks now from the date this page was put online January 23, 2008.

If a domain name is available for purchase then it is legally yours once you purchase it.

We purchased the domain name designsondemand.org in good faith on December 19, 2007

Our legal advise tells us we would win this dispute if Margaret had the courage to file a
complaint with ICANN. To date Margaret has not filed a complaint against us at ICANN.

Margaret claimed she received emails from designers trying to contact us. I asked her to
forward the emails with the full headers. She never did which leads me to believe she never
received the said emails.

We are getting unfair and bad publicity on Heather's site; http://independentneedleworknews.com/2008/01/21/attn-all-designers/

I wrote a response which she approved for approximately 30 minutes before she decided to
take off. We cannot defend ourselves there.

My post to Heather's site that was removed is below;

Heather you claim to be a good reporter. You should check the facts of your stories before
you release them!

The fact of this domain name are as follows.

The .org domain was for sale, we purchased it in good faith without any deception in mind whatsoever!

Margaret's initial contacted us was a very angry email. We replied in a polite manner
and she calmed down enough to talk with us. We wanted to work with her and coincide
in peace. We changed our name to .org for her benefit. We are not obliged to make any
changes for her benefit because legally we own that domain name.

We bent over backwards to try and work with Margaret. She asked us to make lots of
changes, which we did just to be left alone to get on with our new site. Margaret kept
pushing for more and more changes. In pure frustration I contacted a lawyer and showed
him all our correspondence. He told me legally she can't do anything about our site

I have suggested she contact ICANN to have this problem sorted out. Instead Margaret
choose to contact our host in the hopes she could get them to shut us down.

Basically, having a common law trademark cannot prevent another company from doing
business using the same name, not even in the same state. Where it does help is in the case
of the original company taking the other company to court because they've caused
damages, such as loss of business or customer confusion. Basically the same thing
that applies to the Internet.

Rick

Let me list just a few a few changes we made to our site to try and satisfy Margret.

1: We changed all our graphics to read Designs On Demand.org. We paid to have
all our banners and graphics altered to try and please her.

2: We changed our Copyright at the bottom of the page to read © 2008 DesignsOnDemand.org Again we didn't have a problem doing this for her

3. The next stipulation was we must not use the words 'Designs on Demand'
anywhere within our own site. We changed the words on our FAQ page to read
DesignsOnDemand.org. This still wasn't good enough for her, she didn't want us
using the words Designs On Demand anywhere on our site. She suggested we use
the words "us" and "we" in place of DesignsOnDemand.org

4. Our next change was the HTML header title from Designs on Demand to
Designs On Demand.org. Then we went further and added Cross Stitch
Patterns to the header.

5. Margaret contacted our web host and filed a complaint against us. Our
web host has not made any contact with us regarding her complaint and
our site is still online. This should tell you our web host doesn't think
Margaret has a case against us.

My legal advise in a nutshell is, she doesn't have a case against us because
the two web sites are nothing alike. She sells photos on mugs and place mats
and so on. We sell only digital PDF cross stitch pattern files. Her logo
is a coffee cup, ours is a cross stitch pattern. The two sites look nothing alike!

We decided to stand our ground and fight for what is legally our domain.

If any person wants exclusive rights to the name Designs on Demand it is up
to them to purchase every variation of that name so others can't purchase it.
It is not right that she tries to intimidate others out of using a domain
name they purchased legally!

Until today we were prepared to fight all the way to use a name we purchased legally.

Half an hour ago we purchased a new domain called Needlework Designs on Demand.
needleworkdesignsondemand.com

We have every intention of keeping our .org site for the next twelve months.
We bought it in good faith and unless Margaret can prove otherwise to ICANN the
.org name will remain with us.

The only reason we have purchased a new domain name is because we are
getting unfair publicity at Heather's site. We are not allowed to defend ourselves
on Heather's site so the only way we can get our side of this dispute to the
public was to post it here.

Designers reading Heather's write up on the domain name dispute are wondering if they can trust us.

We can be trusted. I can't say the same for the content on Heather's site!

I sent Heather a link this page letting her know I had published the entry she
had removed from her blog. No more than 15 minutes later, Heather put my
blog entry back on her site.

You might also like to read
this blog entry that hasn't been approved on Heather's blog yet.

After adding the above link the blog entry that had not be approved for over 90 minutes,
I let Heather know I had posted a link here so others could read it. Heather now has
approved the blog entry above. Thank you!

We, being Donna, Karen and myself are the only ones who are being totally honest about
everything, the domain name dispute, the blog entries. We are not removing, then re-adding
blog entires or not approving blog entries we don't happen to like.

Karen has posted a comment to Heather's blog. We will give her 8 hours to approve the
comment. If the comment is not approved, we will post a screen-shot of the comment
posted to Heather's blog regarding a question we were asked on her blog.

I am happy to report Heather has approved Karen's response to another persons comment
on Heather's blog. All we are asking for is a fair chance to put our side to the public and
now Heather is giving us that chance. It's a shame we had to put this page up to get our side
of the story to the public.

We don't see any point in going on and on with correspondence either here or in Heather's blog. We want to move on. Therefore we are not prepared to waste more time on this issue.

We hope now we can concentrate on promoting our new site and bringing the designers who have signed up with us many more sales.