From the amusing file comes the following:
Earlier today, Ron Paul filed an international UDRP complaint against RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org with WIPO, a global governing body that is an agency of the United Nations. The complaint calls on the agency to expropriate the two domain names from his supporters without compensation and hand them over to Ron Paul.
On May 1st, 2008 we launched a grassroots website at RonPaul.com that became one of the most popular resources dedicated exclusively to Ron Paul and his ideas. Like thousands of fellow Ron Paul supporters, we put our lives on hold and invested 4.5 years of hard work into Ron Paul, RonPaul.com and Ron Paul 2012. Looking back, we are very happy with what we were able to achieve with unlimited enthusiasm and limited financial resources.
Uh huh.
These folks registered this guy's name and started selling merchandise, which had exactly zero value except in conjunction with his name and fame.
Then they tried to sell him the domain and their mailing list which they compiled using his name and likeness without his consent for a whole ****load of money. $250,000, to be exact.
But now that Ron Paul has instead filed a complaint with WIPO, they're all screaming foul! and claiming that as a Libertarian "trademarks" cannot exist.
Oh bull****.
The simple reality is that the value of their "product", such as it is, would be exactly zero were it not for Ron Paul himself. It is his visage, his record (such as it is) and his name that have acquired secondary meaning.
That is the definition of a strong trademark -- something that has acquired secondary meaning but would otherwise be nondescript.
You don't own this folks -- Ron Paul does.
And despite not being one of his fans in this regard he is exactly correct.
