(Published under Troeltsch’s login, but actually Lorelei.)

For extremely boring work-related reasons, I needed to check a fact about Nissan cars today. So I typed nissan.com into my web browser and discovered that the site is actually owned by Nissan Computer Corp., a small computer sales and repair business in North Carolina. Perhaps not surprisingly, a major feature on the company’s front page is a big fat banner about their ongoing lawsuit with Nissan Motor Corp. USA. Being bored by cars and interested in lawsuits, I clicked the link.

Turns out that Nissan Computer Corp. is owned by a guy whose last name is actually Nissan (via Jerusalem, not Tokyo — same word as the month on the Jewish calendar). He figured out that nissan.com would be useful before the automaker did. Inevitably, the automaker sued him in 1999 for cybersquatting, copyright infringement and trademark dilution. Many details are here (though in a somewhat selective way), but this thing has been to the Ninth Circuit and narrowly avoided cert. If you are interested, a magazine article on the subject is here and a law journal paper is here. In the end, Nissan Computer got to keep its site but spent a lot of money, and it took nine years.

Even beyond the case itself, there were several things that I thought would interest RD about this case:
1. Before Nissan Computer, Mr. Nissan had an auto repair company called Nissan Foreign Car — and he got sued over the computer company!
2. Mr. Nissan’s first name is Uzi. Good thing he didn’t piss THAT company off.
3. On Mr. Nissan’s site, which is updated more frequently than it might appear, we learn that Nissan is partly owned by Renault and Renault is partly owned by the French government. Thus, Nissan Motors is part French. I believe this information is supposed to be damning. Perhaps he’s concerned about the French head-butting the American small business to death.