Former Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul has turned to the United Nations — an agency he’s criticized for years — for assistance in taking back the domain names RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org from a group of Libertarian supporters.
The complaint calls for the agency to expropriate the two domain names from his supporters without compensation and hand them over to Mr. Paul, RonPaul.com states.
The Texas Republican filed the complaint with the U.N.’s World Intellectual Property Organization, claiming he should acquire the domain names for free because he already has a common law trademark on his name, Fox News reports.
The sites’ owners have 20 days to prepare a response and are currently looking for a lawyer to help represent them in the case.
The owners expressed disappointment, labeling Mr. Paul’s actions as “not cool” in a post on the site Friday that called for “our old pre-retirement Ron Paul” to return.
“Back in 2007 we put our lives on hold for you, Ron, and we invested close to 10,000 hours of tears, sweat and hard work into this site at great personal sacrifice. We helped raise millions of dollars for you, we spread your message of liberty as far and wide as we possibly could, and we went out of our way to defend you against the unjustified attacks by your opponents,” the statement said.
The group also criticized Mr. Paul’s “entirely out-of-character” tweet on Feb. 4 about the death of a Navy Iraq War veteran in which he said, “Chris Kyle’s death seems to confirm that ‘he who lives by the sword dies by the sword.’ Treating PTSD at a firing range doesn’t make sense.”
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Jessica Chasmar is a continuous news writer for The Washington Times. Previously, she was part of the start-up team for The Washington Times’ digital aggregation product, Times247. She can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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