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Comment by cbr | Hacker News Reader

Trademarks are generally restricted to a single domain [1], which would mean that these music companies would only have rights to the Grooveshark mark when used in a music context. If there's a company out there that sells a product for grooving pavement that they call "Grooveshark" and sell it on groovesharkpaving.com then there's no domain overlap, but the court's order still asks CloudFlare to block them.

[1] Business context, not domain name. So "computers", or "food".

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You are absolutely correct, however one would need to examine the filing classes to be sure because if any part of the trademark class includes "xyz delivered over the Internet," then they could potentially have a claim to any possible use. However, I would love to start a mountaineering equipment company called GrooveShark and see what would happen when I file a trademark. I could potentially then have ISPs block the so-called 'real' GrooveShark for infringing on my equally valid mark. I could potentially use the case law from the current case as a legal argument to block the other GrooveShark. That might be fun.

k.c seems like a much cooler trademark. you can still take a swing at grooveshark.com, and if you have any money left, you can head over to facebook.com

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that any business may call itself "McDonalds" provided it not sell hamburgers.

Perhaps you can see where I am going here.

This is correct in theory but in practice the "specific context" is often ignored when suing or has been overruled. Apple has sued all sorts of companies that are not even in the broad IT domain (e.g. restaurants) for supposed trademark violations. Legislature is quite different in Germany (Roman Law vs Common Law etc. but AFAIK this clause also exists in German law) but they sued Apfelkind, a mom and pop restaurant business, for example.

Sued, yes, but ultimately withdrew. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/07/apfelkind-cafe-...

Not all trademarks are equal. For "well-known marks" infringement can be considered to occur even with dissimilar goods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark#Well-known_status.

Trademarks are also not global by default, regardless of what jurisdiction the USPTO thinks it would like to have.

Yes, but worth noting that for Paris Convention countries (nearly the whole world) "well-known marks" are afford protection even without registration in the specific geographic area.

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