Take-Two loses legal fight over BioShock.com

by Justin McElroy on Aug 25th 2010 11:28AM

Take-Two: Would you kindly give us Bioshock.com?

Name Administration: ... Umm, no. We're a domain squatter in the Cayman Islands, not giving companies domains is kind of what we do.

Take-Two: Oh, WIPO? Would you kindly tell them to give us back Bioshock.com?

World Intellectual Property Organisation: Well, we talked about it, and ... no. For starters, they registered it before you got any trademarks on the "BioShock" name. Besides, that phrase could apply to other stuff besides your game.

Take-Two: Alright then, would you kindl--

Name Administration: Look, just stop it, OK? You've been saying "would you kindly" every 20 seconds during this hearing and frankly, it's starting to creep us out. And why is it whenever you say it you have to ... oh, what would you call it, WIPO?

WIPO: Glowering. You're glowering.

Name Administration: Yes! You're glowering, and it's weird. And while we're at it, what's up with the golf club?

Via: GI.biz
Source: Gamer/Law

Tags: 2k-boston, Bioshock, domain-registration, Irrational-Games, legal, microsoft, name-administration, pc, playstation, ps3, take-two, wipo, xbox

Reader Comments (50)

First come, first serve.

@CaptainProtonX
for a moment i though u said first there..

this post is hilarious.. good stuff justin.. :D

Well, it sounds like that went very well...

That sucks. :|

But don't major games link to their publisher's website? I don't know Take-2's website, but wouldn't it be like

Bioshock.taketwo.com ?

Or something along those lines?

@ForwardTwo

Even if that's true (it probably is, but I haven't checked) they presumably don't want some weird putting weird things on Bioshock.com and having people associate it with their property.

@ForwardTwo

Advertising revenue for Bioshock.com just went up no doubt lol

@ForwardTwo

yes, but they still usually reserve any domains remotely linked to their title to prevent issues. Like I remember back in late 90's, that Zelda.com was a porn site so nintendo fought / bargained to get the domain down so kids / parents looking for Zelda didn't think Nintendo was posting porn.

First come first serve indeed,
Is it not up for sale though? im sure the TT wouldnt mind buying it

Domain squatters are the scum of the Earth.

@Uncontrol Indeed they are.

@Uncontrol Them and those pesky patent trolls.

@Uncontrol I'm not Scum....I buy stuff that I may use later....I've also sold a few for a couple thousand dollars......you can hardly fault someone for buying digital real-estate and then selling it later....especially if it was done long before any formal trademarks were filed

@Uncontrol Land squatters are equally scummy

@Uncontrol
Jedi scum are the scum of the earth... but domain squatters just so happen to be jedi...

@Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi

Upvote for reasonable counterpoint from an unrepresented point of view.

It's a good point, though since I didn't read the source article, I don't know how well it parallels the story at hand.

@Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi

UPVOTED Aggie, all you suck from a business stand point, sucks that your favorite game/movie/whatever name is already registered and that they have to fork over alot of money to gain the rights to it back... you know what it doesnt suck for, the guy making the money (aka Chris)

so downvote the guy, hes still making money. suckaaaassssss

@PR0F3TA Shouldn't you be in school?

@Uncontrol

i agree. they are scum.

if you go to http://www.bioshock.com/ it's obviously one of those millions of junk signpost sites littering up the internet...

these kinds of sites are just internet advertising garbage. all they do is create a virtual billboard on google natural search engine results, until such a time when someone pays through the nose to buy them and actually use them for a legitimate purpose.

I know that whenever these scam-esk things hit google's rankings, google tinkers with their engine to try to exclude them...but that shit never ends...

@Uncontrol

There needs to be a law that domain names have to be reasonably developed within a year of registration or they go back into the pool. I realize this wouldn't stop people from just throwing up something quick on big domain names, but at least it would stop the douches that just buy up thousands upon thousands of names that sit there doing nothing for decades.

@Chris

If you're planning to develop it within a reasonable amount of time I don't see a problem. I own a lot of domains as well (including bioshock-infinite.com and batmanarkhamcity.org), but they're all sites I'm planning to develop within the next year or so (actually the batman one is already done).

@PR0F3TA

It doesn't just suck for the developer, it sucks for the consumer as well because it severely limits the number of websites competing in each niche.

For instance, there aren't really many good sites for finding good ipad apps. The fact that 99% of the good domain names for ipad apps are sitting off in domain parking hell means that the two people that have related domains and actually want to develop them have a lot less competition and a lot less reason to spend more time and money making a good site. In fact, the top ranking site for the term "ipad apps" outside of apple's own site is just some blog that randomly throws up some articles about apps every now and again. The sites that actually have good, up to date info with good organization, a ratings structure, etc are very few and are ranked lowly because of their poor domain names.

@Ezio Auditore da Firenze

School in August? at least use your brain if you're gonna try to insult someone

@Vcize

domain names are to blame because you can't find good info on iPad apps?? the best websites for iPad apps don't even have the word iPad in the domain name, and not because the domain name was taken but because they didn't want it period.

TouchArcade.com is a good website to get reviews on iPhone apps, by your definition they should have gone with iPhoneGameAppReviews.com because it would have helped dolts like you find a website faster.

@PR0F3TA

I'm about to leave for class in a minute.

@Acosta02

yeah well thats because we're in college, i'm assuming he was referring to Elementary/Jr High.

@Vcize now I may not know where I want to take it in a year or 2, tho most of my domains are going to an operational site. I own over 20 domains as of now, some of which were failed blogs or forums, others were sites that were running well and because of time constraints I couldn't keep up with(a modeling site for girls @ NC A&T SU) but I don't want to lose them and then decide later in life that I want to revisit the idea, or give to someone who shares the same dream as me. My most recent purchase, well its going to be for my Game & Tech Vlog...and it will most certainly get used, wont be on here advertising it tho, Just wouldn't be right. Besides I learned long ago in the web game, if its interesting enough, word of mouth will spread it like wildfire.

@Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi

Yeah, I've got no problem with that. It's the people that are like "oh hey this 3d thing might catch on, so I'm going to go buy the best 5000 domains I can think of that have 3d in them and hoarde them. Then, when people want to buy and develop them, I'm just going to hold onto them for even longer because one day 3d might get even bigger." that need to drop dead.

@PR0F3TA

Man, from the downvotes it looks like you're getting schooled...

@Vcize yea, thats usually corporations tho, there are a handful of companies that own MILLIONS of domain names. I've lost a few that I had forgot about before I transferred them all over to godaddy, and literally after that 30 day period they were snapped up, and I couldn't buy them back, my guess is because the ads they put on the parked page for the domain were generating a good amount of clicks.

@PR0F3TA

The grade school kids started class like 2/3 weeks ago.

@Wiizer

yeah man, nothing like getting schooled on the internet by a bunch of people with a mouse over clicking a "-" button.

@Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi Well, you see, if you have that many domain names and you're paying for them like everyone else, that's one thing.

The big problem are the unscrupulous domain name registrars out there who actually have a backdoor for registering names for essentially zero cost. It's a loophole in the ICANN's rules - something to do with the three day return policy. The registrars can register thousands of names to themselves and pay nothing to do it. And since ICANN seems to hand out registrar certification to anyone who asks, you have probably ended up with half the Internet's viable domain names in the hands of squatters.

Bioshock.com is one of those generic websites that people register just for the sake of it and then sell it for an exorbitant amount of monies...

Sad... Stupid people that uses the internet should be banned and only allowed to use pen and paper to send Letter insted of e-mails.

What is it with all the assholes this week? Sure Take Two should have registered it first, but really WTF? Name Administration, THQ, Dr Perry Ulysses Cox... oh how'd that last one get in there?! Whoops ;)

@Iron Man They should have registered it before the game even existed? The squatter has been sitter on it longer than that.

I hate squatters, but I also don't think someone should be able to take a domain simply because they want it.

Is Rimmerworld taken? I'm afraid to look.

I think Justin is starting to lose his mind.

Domain squatters are the biggest doucheholes on the planet.

Not only do they take away names that could be developed into perfectly good websites, but then they cling to them way beyond a reasonable measure.

They'll reject (without counter) reasonable offers for keywords that are nearing the end of their relevance in some great hope that Apple is going to name their next mobile device a "Gears Of War 2 Forum" to make their domain worth millions.

I HATE web squatters.

Change the name of the game, imo. I never really liked "bioshock" much anyway. The word doesn't have much to do with the game, at least, no more than any other game has.. Most games feature a bunch bios getting shocked after some fashion. Like the shock of having bullets tear through body tissue...that's a shocking bio'y incident.

I think they should name their games after the cities in them. Maybe prefix them with some kind of name-stamped fore-title, like "Irrational Places: Rapture". I mean, bioshock is famous because the game was good, but the game would have been just as good using any name.

@sigma8

it's the history. Search SYSTEM SHOCK.

@arrrgh
Please don't get me started on that. I loved System Shock (both of them) a hundred times more than Bioshock (ok fine, I only liked the first one ten times more). But if you feel you have to tell me this, I think it demonstrates that there's not a strong brand behind the -shock suffix. Plus, they could also have called it somethingelse-shock, which would also have sidestepped the issue.

LMFAO

@SonyPS at the fake interview

Nice summary.

I absolutely hate that people do this. I couldn't care less that Take Two might be forced to buy out this domain name, I just think it's annoying as hell when you type the url incorrectly and you get some shitty half-assed search engine.

I am totally surprised that no one brought up the nissan.com domain. I know it's not exactly the same thing as squatting (which is lame) but it is an example of how “first come first serve” on domain registration does make some sense.
If you aren't aware of the nissan.com domain battle that's been going on for over a decade, take a quick read on the front page. If you want to shop for a car made by Nissan you must goto NissanUSA.com.

I don't see what's wrong with Bioshockgame.com.

It doesn't have the same ring, but a website is a website. To be fair the other guys had it first.

I don't know about other people, but when I look for a website I use a search engine.
If you google bioshock, www.bioshock.com doesn't appear in the first 10 pages of results. If what I'm after doesn't appear in the first 2 pages, I re-define the search string.
So from my perspective, I don't see how this is an issue.

Pagerank will sort this out.

where is Bomberman?

BioShock

Take-Two loses legal fight over BioShock.com

Reader Comments (50)

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 11:32AM CaptainProtonX said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 11:48AM DarkGrimoire said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 11:32AM Kait said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 11:39AM ForwardTwo said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 11:41AM Acosta02 said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 11:43AM MrVee PSN Vampah said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 12:40PM Punkrawk Bbob said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 11:41AM MrVee PSN Vampah said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 11:42AM Uncontrol said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 11:50AM Ezio Auditore da Firenze said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 11:56AM Dusse said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 12:00PM Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 12:18PM rhododragon said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 12:33PM ShadowOp said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 12:35PM TheBrainninja said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 12:48PM PR0F3TA said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 12:52PM Ezio Auditore da Firenze said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 1:01PM ChomskyKnows said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 1:08PM Vcize said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 1:16PM Vcize said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 1:41PM PR0F3TA said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 1:48PM PR0F3TA said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 1:49PM Acosta02 said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 2:27PM PR0F3TA said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 2:53PM Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 3:00PM Vcize said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 3:08PM Wiizer said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 3:31PM Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 6:44PM Token said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 8:46PM PR0F3TA said

Posted: Aug 26th 2010 12:26AM Bridget said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 11:58AM Ashkental said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 12:01PM Iron Man said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 12:35PM WC said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 12:12PM SmokemeaKipper said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 12:25PM Bokonist said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 1:04PM Vcize said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 2:30PM mynameisjay said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 2:36PM sigma8 said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 4:25PM arrrgh said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 4:52PM sigma8 said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 3:17PM SonyPS said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 3:17PM SonyPS said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 5:02PM EA575 said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 5:29PM ChrisAre said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 6:27PM Blinguskahn said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 6:28PM Lerkero said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 7:48PM rartemass said

Posted: Aug 25th 2010 10:44PM delicatessen lama said

Posted: Aug 26th 2010 11:25AM Earandir said

BioShock Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

WB conjures up Harry Potter for Kinect this fall

Featured Stories

Weekly Webcomic Wrapup is a stranger in a strange land

Silver Lining: I Am Alive's unfeeling world

Game Of Thrones and the paradoxes of adaptation

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW