Autodesk seems to [not?] like people promoting Revit

Audoesk seems to be suing Revitforum. Don't they have any sense of bad online campaings?
Català - Castellano - Deutsch
Got the message I am quoting below from RevitForum. Apparently, Autodesk wants to take over their domain because it uses the word Revit. Look, I am no expert on copyright laws and domain names, but it seems kind of stupid to ban a community of users to talk about your product. Are the guys at Revit Forum making money because of the use of the Revit name? Not sure, but even if they do, isn't it logical that a Forum where people talk about revit should be called "something with revit + something with Forum"?

Dear revitforum.org members, colleagues and friends,

Our apologies for the mass email - we try to avoid these as much as possible, but we feel it's very important that we share this news with all of our members as soon as possible.

As some of you may be aware, Autodesk, Inc., makers of Revit, have retained the law firm of Donahue Gallagher Woods to notify all domain holders that have the word REVIT contained in their top-level domain name, that they are infringing on the Autodesk REVIT trademark. They have requested that we change the domain name of revitforum.org to one that doesn't contain the the word REVIT.

We refute these claims of infringement. The use of the trademark "REVIT" in the domain name "revitforum.org" is protected by the "Nominative Fair Use" legal doctrine that provides an affirmative defense to trademark infringement as enunciated by the United States Ninth Circuit, by which a person may use the trademark of another as reference to describe the product.

The administrators of revitforum.org will formally respond to Autodesk. However, if all else fails, we want to assure you that we are prepared to move revitforum.org to a new domain if that is required.

Whether or not there is a domain name change, rest assured that the forums will continue to operate just as they do now. We retain all the data on revitforum.org - that is not in any way at risk.

We will notify you via email and on the revitforum.org website of any required domain name change ahead of time.

Also, keep updated, and feel free to comment in this thread: http://www.revitforum.org/out-there/12753-revitforum-org-domain.html

Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,
Gordon, Ian & Klaus

p.s. if you know an attorney with the appropriate expertise who is willing to donate their time for this good cause, please feel free to contact a forum administrator privately.

Hate this type of Goliat attitudes big companies have sometimes. What do you think?
UPDATE: Apparently, Autodesk has replied and seems to be willing to not force a change of domain name if the forum changes some stuff and adds a disclaimer about not being affiliated at all with Autodesk. Well, that seems fair. Not sure if it is a response to the fact that the news about this have spread quick or of really good-hearted company behavior but the result will be the same so I guess things are not as bad as they seemed at the beginning.

Tweet