Response

I never could resist the chance to reply…

Dear Mr Bateman,

Many thanks for your comments – I would refer to them as an email, but it seems you are far more prepared to leave comments instead of emails. Obviously this gives the lie to the intent “to deal with this matter informally“, as the communication was left in the public domain. I understand this actually can be seen to constitute the UK criminal offence of “threatening behaviour”, as your open communication contained threats of un-named further actions.

Regarding the points in your comments, I should first of all point out that as destruction-for-dummies.co.uk is a completely UK-based domain, it does not fall under the “federal” laws of the US. The domain (which I shall hereafter refer to as d4d™, which is it’s normal name) has been registered with Nominet (the UK registrar) since 2000 – I am surprised it has taken your company this long to find it. I would also suggest that Wileys should perhaps spend some money and reserve all “for dummies” domain names, if they are so obsessive about this style of domain name.

Having read the copyright notices on www.dummies.com, I also notice that you insist upon holding the trademark for (among others) the phrase “Unofficial Guide” – having looked on Google ( http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=%22unofficial+guide%22&spell=1 ) it seems you have at least 72,000 other trademarks to consider. I should also point out that since the first day of owning the d4d™ domain, there has been a disclaimer on the index page, disavowing all relation to the for-dummies brand. However, in accordance with your comments, I have removed any reference to “for dummies” from the site graphics etc. Obviously it is impossible to remove the reference to “for dummies” from the domain name.

If Wiley is serious about attempting to remove d4d from the web, I would hope that as part of the “informal” proceedings, they would be willing to pay for the registration and hosting of a new .co.uk domain name of my choosing. As it is purely down to Wiley’s insistence that this matter has arisen, I believe that this resolution would be one that would be mutually satisfying.

If you have any further comments, please feel free to contact me by replying to this email. At least that should help it keeping the comments out of the public domain.

Sincerely

Lyle™
Domain Owner.