Car rental company demands typo of National.com, a domain it doesn’t even own.
Vanguard Trademark Holdings, which owns the National car rental brand, has filed a cybersquatting lawsuit (pdf) against the domain name Natiional.com.
The company filed a UDRP against the domain name already. It lost that case in June. On the same day it won a similar case for another typo, Nationnal.com.
Part of the reason it lost the Natiional.com case is because the panel ruled it’s OK to own a typo of a generic word.
But what I find most interesting is that the company doesn’t even own National.com. It’s owned by National Semiconductor. So Vanguard is asking a court to hand over a typo of a domain it doesn’t even own!
I also get a kick out of the convoluted way Vanguard found links to car rentals on Natiional.com, basically saying that if you go a few pages into the directory-like parked page you can find links to car rental companies, including National.
Vanguard says that Natiional.com, although protected with a whois privacy service, actually belongs to Kevin Ham’s Vertical Axis.
George Kirikos says
Aliens do exist, according to Paragraph 11 of the statement of claim. 🙂 E.T. phone home!
Nacho Domain says
Vanguard Trademark Holdings, which owns the National car rental brand, sounds like a domain thief to me.
What a dirty, scummy company Vanguard Trademark Holding is, IMO.
No Big Deal says
Andrew the fact that they do not own the correct spelling of their tm has no bearing on the case. I am suprized that this does not happen more often in fact.
As there can be more than one tm registered for a given term it stands to reason that not all tm holders will enjoy the rights to the com equivalent of their mark
That however does not prevent abuse of the mark by way of domains. As mark holders are on call to protect their marks It again stands to reason that this kind of case should arise from time to time. Not talking about the merits of this case just commenting on the cause