Warner Bros. wins domain name dispute for Hogwarts.com.
Children and dreamers interested in attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from the Harry Potter series will soon be able to find it more easily on the web — Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. has just been awarded the domain name Hogwarts.com through a UDRP.
Warner Bros. has rights dating from June 1, 1998 in which author J.K. Rowling granted and assigned to it rights in all four books in the Harry Potter series as of that date.
The respondent in this case registered the domain name April 20, 1999. Over time it has resolved to a number of different registrar parking pages featuring links to Harry Potter merchandise.
It didn’t take an act of wizardry for Warner Bros. to win this case. Still, why did it take so long for the company to go after this domain name?
Jeremy Leader says
Maybe they finally figured out that they couldn’t get hogwarts.edu?
Andrew Allemann says
@ Jeremy – you just gave me a nice Friday afternoon laugh
Larry Seltzer says
Shouldn’t they have Hogwarts.edu?