Kansas county wants former Jan. 6 defendant to turn over website domain

The Johnson County Commission in Kansas is taking on a former Jan. 6 defendant in a battle over a web domain he registered more than four years ago.

William Pope, a Topeka man who represented himself in his Capitol riot case — and whose charges were dismissed by President Donald Trump on his first day in office — says the Board of County Commissioners is trying to steal www.jocokansas.com, a domain he registered in December 2020.

“The Johnson County government is behaving like a spoiled child who covets a toy someone else is playing with and tries to take it by force,” Pope told The Kansas City Star on Wednesday after filing a response to a complaint the county filed against him.

“I did not initiate this dispute; they did. Even so, I gave them an opportunity to make a reasonable offer for the domain, but they decided they would rather pay an expensive attorney to proceed with this complaint,” Pope said. “This is terrible leadership by the Johnson County Board of Commissioners, and demonstrates that the current government of Johnson County is hostile to business and disrespectful to Kansas residents.”

The county filed the complaint last month with the World Intellectual Property Organization Arbitration and Mediation Center against Pope and the registrar, NameCheap Inc., of Phoenix. It alleges that Pope was infringing on the county’s JOCO branding and engaging in cybersquatting activity, using the county’s “JOCO Marks” to host pay-per-click links associated with — and competing with — the county’s products and services.

Pope said the allegations that he is “cybersquatting” are “categorically false.” He said he planned to develop the jocokansas.com site as a business property for his company, Free State Kansas, immediately after registering it in December 2020.

The project, he said, was a component of the Ph.D. in leadership communication he’s pursuing through Kansas State University. But he said he got sidetracked after being charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach and didn’t have time to work on it.

Pope was indicted on two felony counts — civil disorder and obstruction of an official proceeding — along with six misdemeanors. The government dismissed the felony obstruction count and two misdemeanor counts last year, and on Jan. 20, his entire case was dismissed as a result of Trump’s executive order granting clemency to the nearly 1,600 Capitol riot defendants.

The Johnson County Commission didn’t originally know who it was dealing with when it filed the complaint, because Pope had registered the domain through a company that kept his name private.

County says JOCO a trademark since 2003

In its complaint, the county says that Pope’s jocokansas.com domain “is identical or confusingly similar” to the county’s JOCO-related domains.

The Johnson County website, www.jocogov.org, was registered in 2002, according to the complaint. Since at least 2003, the county says, it “has prominently and continuously used the trademark JOCO as a distinctive, unique nickname for the county, Johnson County, Kansas, in connection with a variety of local media and community information goods and services.”

Those include magazines and newsletters that provide local news, public service updates and local emergency and crime alerts, the complaint says.

Around 2014, it says, the trademark use was expanded to include JOCO KANSAS.

The JOCO Marks are also featured throughout the county’s social media platforms, the complaint says, including Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and X, serving as essential ways to distribute information to residents.

In addition to the jocogov.org domain, the complaint says, the county owns numerous other domain names that incorporate the JOCO Marks: jocogov.app; jocogov.co; jocogov.com; jocogov.dev; jocogov.net; jocogov.org; jocogov.us; jocokansas.app; jocokansas.co; jocokansas.gov; jocokansas.net; jocokansas.org; jocokansas.us; and jocoks.com.

Because of its extensive use of the JOCO Marks for more than 20 years, the county argues, it has developed strong trademark rights for them. Pope’s site, it says, capitalizes on the county’s established reputation and the public’s recognition of the JOCO Marks, which creates a misleading association.

Pope’s use of the domain also diverts internet traffic intended for the county and its associated entities, it says, and “diminishes the value of the JOCO Marks by linking them to a commercialized, ad-driven website rather than the legitimate and reliable goods and services Complainant provides to its community.”

The complaint says that Pope sought resolution of the issue but then declined an offer of $1,520 for the domain name, which it said was double the domain’s appraised value. Pope told the county in an April 10 email that the offer was “an inconsequential amount” and that he would only consider “reasonable offers.”

Pope’s actions, the county says, show he is using the domain “in bad faith and for commercial purposes.”

The county is asking that a single-member administrative panel handle the dispute and transfer the jocokansas.com domain to the Board of County Commissioners.

Complaint ‘came as a complete surprise’

Pope filed his response to the complaint on Wednesday, calling the action “a malicious attempt by a government body in Kansas to steal my business property” and an “egregious assault on the Constitution.”

His filing shows that he registered the jocokansas.com domain on Dec. 15, 2020. Pope notes in the document that even though the Board of County Commissioners claims to own JOCO as a brand, it’s not trying to seize other domains that use JOCO.

Pope also argues that while the county says JOCO is part of its branding and that it therefore should be granted sole ownership and use, JOCO is actually a geographic term and cannot be trademarked.

Pope told The Star that the county’s complaint “came as a complete surprise.”

“I didn’t even know seizing a domain in this way was possible,” he said. “I registered the domain with a sincere intent to develop it for my business, so there was no bad faith on my part at all.”

He said the county decided long after he registered his domain that it wanted to start shifting to a .gov domain, and it chose one with the same name as his .com domain.

“But the core of their complaint rests on their false claim that they own the term ‘JOCO’ and that they should be able to seize the property of any business or organization that uses that term,” Pope said.

In his response filed Wednesday, Pope said he registered other local Kansas domains on the same day he registered jocokansas.com. He said he purchased the domain hayskansas.com for $279 and the domain topekakansas.com for $1,288. He paid just $7.56 to register jocokansas.com.

That same day, he said, he met with his Ph.D. committee adviser about doing his dissertation on community journalism in Kansas.

Pope told The Star that while the implications of his case for other organizations that use JOCO in their business name or domain are significant, the bigger concern is the possibility of governments trying to seize other geographic domain names, especially if there is a growing movement to move to .gov domains.

“If Johnson County succeeds in this dispute, the state government of Kansas might see that and eventually try to seize kansas.com from the Wichita Eagle,” he said. “They could claim it as a branding dispute, but effectually, it would be a tool to silence and censor a news organization that reports on the conduct of our state government. The First Amendment ramifications of this are huge.”

Pope first mentioned his dispute with the county last month in a post on X.

“The Johnson County, Kansas government is trying to illegally seize my business property (a domain), so it looks like I will now be in an adversarial relationship with the county,” he wrote. “My retirement from Pro Se legal practice was unfortunately short. But I’m not tired of winning!”

A supporter responded that he didn’t deserve what the county was doing to him.

“Do not pity me,” he wrote. “They are the ones who stepped on a rattlesnake.”