Cydia Creator Goes to Court to Obtain Cydia Domain Name

[Michael Essany]

Although many of the major domain name disputes we've heard about in recent months involve Apple reportedly having to cough up millions for domains they feel entitled to, there is no shortage of domain-related drama in our community too.

Jay Freeman - also known as Saurik among jailbreakers - is recognized the world over as the man, the myth, the legend behind Cydia. Now, the creator of this jailbreaking juggernaut is pursuing in court that which should legally be his - Cydia.com, the digital territory that Freeman asserts should be his domain.

According to the legal documents pertinent to Saurik's lawsuit (made available via DomainNameWire), Saurik contends that the current owner of Cydia.com is infringing upon the Cydia brand and trademark. Consequently, Saurik is asking for ownership of Cydia.com.

From DomainNameWire: "The company’s in rem lawsuit against the Cydia.com domain name alleges that the owner of the domain name changed the content of the page from a parked page to one about Apple products after it contacted him."

In addition to Suarik's bid for the Cydia.com domain, his company - Saurikit LLC - is seeking damages for legal fees.

Source: DomainNameWire

[nerddownthestreet]

Cydia is a latin work. Lamest lawsuit ever

[Hosko817]

Jay has to have an archived image on file somewhere. should be a simple domain squatting matter.

[sziklassy]

hypocrisy at it's finest...

[Hosko817]

Cydia is a latin work. Lamest lawsuit ever

being a latin word has nothing to do with this.

[vantheman169]

I think the domain should be awarded, but Saurik should have to pay up i think.

[killakill]

I think cydia.com page as of now is a little ironic:

"Due to massive malicious attacks and overwhelming spam activities recently by hackers, our forum unfortunately has to be temporary suspended for major maintenance, please check back later. We are sorry for the inconvenience."

Not saying Saurik had anything to do with it, but kind of a coincidence just like the PSN after they filed the lawsuit with GeoHot. Just saying.

[Hosko817]

or its a pretty believable story to cover the fact that your just sitting on a domain name hoping somebody will pay up for it. I'm 99% sure this is the case

[Aurora331]

I think cydia.com page as of now is a little ironic:

"Due to massive malicious attacks and overwhelming spam activities recently by hackers, our forum unfortunately has to be temporary suspended for major maintenance, please check back later. We are sorry for the inconvenience."

Not saying Saurik had anything to do with it, but kind of a coincidence just like the PSN after they filed the lawsuit with GeoHot. Just saying.

The website has been displaying that message since long before this story broke.

[saurik]

I think the domain should be awarded, but Saurik should have to pay up i think.

In order for this to happen, they need to either entertain my offer or at least give me a response with their quote in it: to date, over the last three years, occasional attempts to negotiate transfer of the domain name in exchange for money has gone nowhere.

I think cydia.com page as of now is a little ironic:

"Due to massive malicious attacks and overwhelming spam activities recently by hackers, our forum unfortunately has to be temporary suspended for major maintenance, please check back later. We are sorry for the inconvenience."

Not saying Saurik had anything to do with it, but kind of a coincidence just like the PSN after they filed the lawsuit with GeoHot. Just saying.

Their website has had this message on it for many months now, maybe even a year (I do not remember when they decided to put that up). It certainly has no correlation to anything that I have said in public, or anything I have filed: there would have been no ability for anyone to have attacked them on purpose because of me.

It is my belief that they decided at some point that their website's content (which was mostly users attempting to contact an official Cydia support channel) was damning to their case to hold the domain name, so they decided to take the website down instead.

In addition to Suarik's bid for the Cydia.com domain, his company - Saurikit LLC - is seeking damages for legal fees.

(For what it's worth, I asked my lawyer why this was included before we filed, and I was told this was standard practice in lawsuits like this. The legal fees are actually quite low, and the general hope is that stuff like this never hits courts anyway: all I really want is for the current owners to actually be willing to negotiate.)

[feidhlim1986]

Cydia is a large genus of tortrix moths, belonging to the tribe Grapholitini of subfamily Olethreutinae.


Cydia.com
"Due to massive malicious attacks and overwhelming spam activities recently by hackers, our forum unfortunately has to be temporary suspended for major maintenance, please check back later. We are sorry for the inconvenience."

[Hosko817]

Cydia is a large genus of tortrix moths, belonging to the tribe Grapholitini of subfamily Olethreutinae.

Simply put: The name "Cydia" is an allusion to the Codling Moth, with a scientific name of Cydia pomonella, which is the proverbial "worm in the apple."

@Saurik- probably time to pay my company a visit https://www.cscglobal.com/global/web/csc/home

[KraXik]

I like how Saurik posts here. We've only really heard one side of the story, but I can't see it going anywhere but it Saurik's favour.

Pretty open & shut IMO.

[nerddownthestreet]

being a latin word has nothing to do with this.

Give me a minute, let me create a line of software and put a lower case "u" in front of it. Yes, that sounds good. I will make the letter "u" mine and sue the sh*t out of everybody that uses it. Maybe I'll be a little evil and closed too. Then maybe somebody that hates how evil I am will make a product called "Cestoda" (scientific class of tapeworms) and sue the sh*t out of everybody that uses the name because he/she wants it for themselves.

Nothing personal man, but see what I'm getting at? This is hypocrisy at its best.

[Truckerbear]

Why is not being said:

Cydia.com

Record created on: 2002-12-12 11:14:04 UTC
Record modified on: 2011-03-02 01:50:36 UTC
Record expires on: 2011-12-12 UTC


Cykon Technology Limited has owned it since 2002. Cydia as we the user have known about it since 2007/08 for iPhone. If Jay Freeman had Cydia created long before this Hong Kong company had owned the domain then I say that Cykon should be suing Jay.

As for Jay/Saurik saying above that he just wants to negotiate and them make an offer... Are you kidding here... If I don't want to sell you something I don't have to speak to you ever. If you want to claim I owe you something because I am in this case squatting on your copyright... Are you serious?? Open and shut book in my eyes... Jay created Cydia, didn't research to see if this company would mind if he used their domain as its name... he used it anyway and now he wants to sue them to own it because they won't even speak to him. Had the domain been created at nearly the same time that Cydia showed up on the scene then I would feel otherwise.

I think its great that he wants to own it... but sue to get it because they aren't making an offer... walk away and wish you called cydia something else and bought the domain at the same time!

Are we ever going to fix the comments and post button on this new forum. I have stated many times once you log in... you only can see one comment the first comment... even if their is 20 comments. When you go to make a post the add comment button is this little tiny dot of a button that if I didn't know that was a button I wouldn't know how to reply.. and lastly having to sign out just to read any comment is unacceptable.

I am on firefox/vista/pc but if I log in Safari/vista/pc same deal.

P.S. Only 1/2 of the posts have the "read more link" most you have to click the subject to read the comments or the rest of the post. I sincerely miss the old forum and feel that the people that need to read this comment never will.

[KraXik]

@Truckerbear

Your missing one small but important fact. Cydia is trademarked to Saurik.

[saurik]

Why is not being said:

Cydia.com

Record created on: 2002-12-12 11:14:04 UTC
Record modified on: 2011-03-02 01:50:36 UTC
Record expires on: 2011-12-12 UTC


Cykon Technology Limited has owned it since 2002. Cydia as we the user have known about it since 2007/08 for iPhone. If Jay Freeman had Cydia created long before this Hong Kong company had owned the domain then I say that Cykon should be suing Jay.

As for Jay/Saurik saying above that he just wants to negotiate and them make an offer... Are you kidding here... If I don't want to sell you something I don't have to speak to you ever. If you want to claim I owe you something because I am in this case squatting on your copyright... Are you serious?? Open and shut book in my eyes... Jay created Cydia, didn't research to see if this company would mind if he used their domain as its name... he used it anyway and now he wants to sue them to own it because they won't even speak to him. Had the domain been created at nearly the same time that Cydia showed up on the scene then I would feel otherwise.

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how trademarks work, and why they exist. If you want to trademark "Cydia" right now, you can: seriously, if you file a registration for it, nothing stops you from ALSO trademarking the name "Cydia". For example, if you started a chain of laundro-mats right now, and called them "Cydia", that would be totally fine.

However, you cannot use that name for the restricted area of software distribution, or anywhere where users are going to get confused. For example, if you start a forum where people can discuss Apple products, with specific emphasis on the iPhone and iPad, you are going to cause users to believe that you are me: real people will (and have) be deceived by such a practice.

That's the goal of a trademark: to protect people from being deceived by third parties attempting to claim they are someone else. It does not, despite what a lot of people think, allow a company to lay claim to a word: multiple people can use the same word as their name, as long as they are in different fields such that people are unlikely to be confused by the overlap.

The issue here, then, is not that the owners of cydia.com exist, or that they own this domain name, or even that they want to use this domain name for something. The problem is that, after it became clear to everyone that Cydia was a program I made, clear enough that I was able to register a trademark on it for that specific purpose, they decided to "move in" and force an overlap.

That is simply /not ok/, and has caused a ton of people issues: I seriously receive e-mail from users claiming that they got no, useless, or incorrect advice from cydia.com, where they assumed I was running an official support forum. Of course, they obviously would not have thought that had they went to that website and found a laundromat: and that's why trademarks apply to this, despite the 2002 registration.

[ronanz]

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of how trademarks work, and why they exist. If you want to trademark "Cydia" right now, you can: seriously, if you file a registration for it, nothing stops you from ALSO trademarking the name "Cydia". For example, if you started a chain of laundro-mats right now, and called them "Cydia", that would be totally fine.

However, you cannot use that name for the restricted area of software distribution, or anywhere where users are going to get confused. For example, if you start a forum where people can discuss Apple products, with specific emphasis on the iPhone and iPad, you are going to cause users to believe that you are me: real people will (and have) be deceived by such a practice.

That's the goal of a trademark: to protect people from being deceived by third parties attempting to claim they are someone else. It does not, despite what a lot of people think, allow a company to lay claim to a word: multiple people can use the same word as their name, as long as they are in different fields such that people are unlikely to be confused by the overlap.

The issue here, then, is not that the owners of cydia.com exist, or that they own this domain name, or even that they want to use this domain name for something. The problem is that, after it became clear to everyone that Cydia was a program I made, clear enough that I was able to register a trademark on it for that specific purpose, they decided to "move in" and force an overlap.

That is simply /not ok/, and has caused a ton of people issues: I seriously receive e-mail from users claiming that they got no, useless, or incorrect advice from cydia.com, where they assumed I was running an official support forum. Of course, they obviously would not have thought that had they went to that website and found a laundromat: and that's why trademarks apply to this, despite the 2002 registration.

Any questions?

[MuddyPaws]

Lame as hell.

Sue them to stop from running a web site that might claim to be related saurik's software. NOT to FORCE them to sell something that they own and do not want to sell.

Should have check into the domain name before you named your software.

[whereswaldo]

Cydia is a latin work. Lamest lawsuit ever

except if you go to cydia.com, It's about iOS jailbreaking, so it's not just the word