Candidate spins webs around Montandon domain names

Dan Kulin

Thursday, Feb. 10, 2005 | 9:12 a.m.

The race for the North Las Vegas mayor's office is now also a cyber-war of sorts.

Mayoral candidate Andres Ramirez and incumbent Mayor Michael Montandon are at odds over Montandon-related Internet Web page names the challenger bought in late December.

Ramirez said he paid $8 each for www.mikemontandon.com, www.michaelmontandon.com and www.mayormontandon.com after seeing that Montandon referred people to www.mayormontandon.com in a mail piece the mayor sent to residents.

Montandon has since purchased www.mayormikemontandon.com, and sent Ramirez a letter from his attorney asking Ramirez to turn over the Web site names, adding that "activation of these Web sites will be considered infringement of our client's trademark rights."

Ramirez, 26, said he bought the Web page addresses, also called domain names, "just to rile him," and because "here he is sending out a mailer telling people to go to a Web site and he doesn't even own the site."

Ramirez said he is not intimidated by Montandon's lawyer and has no plans to put anything on the Web sites, which now display ads for godaddy.com, the company through which Ramirez bought the domain names.

Ramirez's campaign Web site is at www.andresramirez.com.

Montandon, who is seeking a third term, said he thinks the Montandon-related names are proprietary. The letter from his attorney said that because of the public's association of the Montandon-related names with Montandon, "The use of these names has come to be recognized by the general public as indicating as association with our client. Our client, therefore, has common law trademark rights in these names even though they have not been registered."

Montandon said he thought he owned the Web site, mayormontandon.com, when he sent out his mail piece. This is the first election for which Montandon has chosen to have a campaign Web site.

"I asked my Web guy to go out and purchase everything," Montandon said.

The mayor said that he finds the entire situation "kind of ludicrous," and added: "He's going to try to rile me, and I'm going to try and get votes."