Sallie.com -- Girls' names ruled generic

[dtobias]

The Sallie Mae Foundation just lost its UDRP case to try to grab sallie.com. They claimed it was "confusingly similar" to their U.S. trademark on "Sallie Mae" (though the respondent was in Italy, where they had no trademark), but the respondent won by pointing out that "Sallie" is a common girl's name and was not strongly associated with the trademark when "Mae" was omitted. The claim of reverse domain hijacking was rejected, however, as the panelist seems to be of the opinion (common in the pro-IP community) that even overzealous attempts were justified in the name of "protecting" one's trademark, and hence the case was not brought in bad faith.

This case was in contrast to the lauren.biz one a few years back which summarily ignored the registrant's claim that the name was registered on behalf of his daughter, Lauren, and ordered it transferred to complainent Ralph Lauren. That case was under the STOP rather than the UDRP, and that policy was tilted more in the pro-trademark-holders' direction because it was applied before the registrant even got a chance to try to use the domain in question.

While "Sallie" is a fairly commonplace girl's name, it's a less common spelling than "Sally"; a Google search (by myself, not the complainant, respondent, or panelist) showed 781,000 hits on "Sallie" (many of the top results being connected to the Sallie Mae Foundation) and 7,660,000 for Sally (including hits for Sally Jessy Raphael, Sally Ride, Sally Forth, and the movie When Harry Met Sally).

There are a number of other names (mostly female) that have -y and -ie variations; it seems like the -y form is usually most popular. Kimmy has 327,000 hits, while Kimmie has 132,000. (I think the Full House character is "Kimmy".) Tammy has 2,780,000 (notably Tammy Wynette) while Tammie has 210,000. Billy (usually a male name) has 98,800,000 (notably Billy Joel), easily beating Billie (the feminine form), which has 2,050,000 (notably Billie Holliday). Mary and Marie are distinct names, pronounced differently; Mary has 55,400,000 (notably the Virgin Mary and William & Mary College) and Marie has 31,300,000 (notably Marie Curie and Marie Callender).

On the other hand, Jessie (2,820,000) easily beats Jessy (396,000), though they're both beaten by the usually-male form Jesse (7,670,000).

Lizzy / Lizzie is another of the cases where the -ie form is more popular, though it's fairly close; there are 943,000 hits for "Lizzy" (many related to the band Thin Lizzy) and 1,630,000 for "Lizzie" (popular referents being Disney's Lizzie McGuire and 19th century alleged murderess Lizzie Borden).

[Acro]

But Melanie beats Melany by a factor of 100 :-D

[namedropper]

Good news...

...and not just because it confirms what I always said about my Savanna.com

[Acro]

Be glad the porn star by the same name is dead :-D

[namedropper]

I think there's more than one that use that name. I've had offers from a couple diferent ones anyway. I just love saying that I've turned down porn stars.

One of the main reasons I haven't sold is we'd rather not have the godchild randomly typing her name into a web browser some day and seeing naked people. The other godchild's .com name is a business site, so that's safe. Not that they won't run across porn online eventually, but why risk it with one of the things they are sure to type into the browser someday?

[dvdrip]

My god, you know her?
I was shocked when I found out.

Be glad the porn star by the same name is dead :-D

[Acro]

She was Pauly Shore's girlfriend. Commited suicide in the late 80's or early 90's I think.

[Dave Zan]

http://www.findadeath.com/Deceased/s...h/savannah.htm

So young, so sad...