Tag Archives: wipo

Fri 10th September 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Asia Trademark Domain Scam Now Spoofing WIPO - Scam ups the ante by pretending to be World Intellectual Property Organization. The Trademark Domain Name Scam is upping the ante, now pretending to be an email sent from World Intellectual Property Organization. In this scam, an entity that usually says it’s located in Asia says that someone has applied to register a number of domain names that include your “trademark” (really just the second level of one of your domain registrations). You can see an example ... read more ...
Wed 1st September 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DreamHost.co and AOLmail.co Among First .Co Domains Hit with UDRP - Trademark owners go after their names on .co. A dozen companies have filed 13 .co domain name arbitration disputes since the relaunch of .co as a a generic domain name. The most recent UDRP filing was for Dreamhost.co by the owner of the large web host DreamHost.com. This is a somewhat surprising case given that surely a web host was aware of the release of .co domains. Other companies have also filed cases. AOL wants aolmail.co and L.A. Fitness is going after lafitness.co. ... read more ...
Wed 25th August 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
VirtualExpo.com Virtually Reverse Hijacked - French company guilty of reverse domain name hijacking for VirtualExpo.com. A French company has been found to have attempted reverse domain name hijacking of the domain VirtualExpo.com. M. Corentin Benoit Thiercelin, who claims to run a company called VirtualExpo, filed the complaint with WIPO to get the domain name. The domain was registered in 1996, well before the complainant filed trademarks on the name. The earliest of the trademarks was registered in 2005. The ... read more ...
Fri 20th August 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
No Grand Theft Domain: Take-Two Interactive Loses Battle over BioShock.com - Video game publisher loses arbitration for BioShock.com domain name. Take-Two Interactive Software, publishers of the Grand Theft Auto series and BioShock, have lost a domain name arbitration case to get the domain name BioShock.com. Take-Two filed for a trademark on BioShock back in 2005 on an intent-to-use basis, and first used the mark in commerce in 2007 according to USPTO filings. But the company claimed there was online chatter about the release of a new game ... read more ...
Mon 16th August 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Paris Hilton Upset About Cybersquatters - Hotel heiress asks WIPO for help getting domain names. Paris Hilton has filed two separate arbitration cases at World Intellectual Property Organization to get control of domain names that include her name. The first case was filed by Paris Hilton Entertainment, Inc. on August 12 to get the domain name paris-hilton-perfume.net. The domain name currently does not resolve. The owner of this domain name may have already capitulated, as the case has been dropped. However, ... read more ...
Thu 29th July 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Hack DealsPl.us Loses Case for DealsPlus.com - Company tries to get “proper” version of its domain through UDRP but fails. I’ve argued many, many times that you shouldn’t create a web site at a “domain hack”, where the top level domain name is part of the keywords. Here’s just another example, courtesy of a decision at World Intellectual Property Organization. Sazze, Inc, which operates DealsPl.us, has lost a case brought against the owner of DealsPlus.com. DealsPl.us is a big web site, getting ... read more ...
Wed 28th July 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
WIPO Panelist Calls Juice Bar’s Assertions “Mystifying” - Juice bar wants .com, but will have to pay for it. A WIPO UDRP panelist has ruled against a juice bar called “Juicy Details”, calling the complainant’s assertions about bad faith registration of JuicyDetails.com “Mystifying”. Juicy Details, based in the Netherlands, filed the complaint against Another.com, which owns JuicyDetails.com. But the panelist thought Juicy Detail’s accusations didn’t add up: The Panel finds these assertions mystifying. From ... read more ...
Tue 13th July 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Owner of Casino.com Busts on Caisinos.com - A generic, a typo, or neither. The owner of Casino.com has failed to convince a World Intellectual Property Forum panel that it should get the domain name Caisinos.com. The case was filed by Mansion (Gibraltar) Limited of Gibraltar, which claimed that Caisinos.com is merely a typo of its Casino.com domain name. There are a few problems with this argument: 1. Casino is a generic term, although this is the weakest defense 2. If anything, it’s a typo of Casinos.com, ... read more ...
Mon 17th May 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Magic Bra Gets Stuffed in Domain Name Dispute - Bra company fails in domain dispute. A H Sportswear Co., Inc., which holds two trademarks for “Magic Bra”, has lost a UDRP case for the domain name MagicBra.com. The domain name was registered by Hu Yanlin of Beijing in 2001 and he says was never aware of A H Sportswear’s marks. He also said the term was descriptive in nature: The Respondent submits that the term “magic bra” is a descriptive term which not only refers to a brassiere which will make ... read more ...
Tue 11th May 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Facebook Fights for Facebook.me Domain Name - Facebook files for arbitration to get Facebook.me domain name. Facebook has filed a complaint with World Intellectual Property Organization to get the domain name Facebook.me. The domain name is currently registered to a United Arab Emirates man. .Me is technically the country code domain name for Montenegro, but has been commercialized to be a personalized “me” domain name. This isn’t the first country code domain name the social networking behemoth has ... read more ...
Mon 3rd May 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
French Fashion House Loses Case for Guy’s Nickname Domain Name - Designer can’t have Sandro.com domain name. I’m so angry about losing this case! French apparel designer Sandro Andy has lost a domain name dispute to get the domain name Sandro.com. The company will have to stick with its current Sandro-Paris.com domain name. The company the complaint with World Intellectual Property Organization against Alessandro Balzarin of Frankentahl, Germany. Balzarin registered the domain name way back in 1997 because Sandro is a common ... read more ...
Tue 20th April 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ScotiaBank Loses Case for Caribana Festival Domain Name - Title sponsor for Carnival event in Toronto loses case to get Caribana.com domain name. Bank of Nova Scotia, the title sponsor for Toronto’s Caribbean Carnival called “Caribana”, has lost a dispute to gain ownership of the domain name Caribana.com. Bank of Nova Scotia — aka ScotiaBank — filed the complaint with World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to get the domain name from Working Word Co-operative, which publishes Word Magazine. Working Word ... read more ...
Mon 12th April 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Subway Lawyer Misses Layup, Loses Domain Name - Subway doesn’t meet low burden of proof and loses domain dispute. When you see a UDRP case for the domain name MySubwayRewards.com, you assume that the sandwich chain will get a slam dunk. It should be an easy case, especially when the respondent uses the domain name to promote free gift cards to Subway. But that doesn’t mean the complainant gets away without making a basic case. That’s exactly what happened in the case of Doctor’s Associates Inc. v. Atomix. ... read more ...
Thu 1st April 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Baby Product Company “Gambles”, Gets 4 Character Domain Canceled - Company gets BiBi.com domain name ‘canceled’. [Update: The domain name wasn’t actually ordered transferred to Bibi, instead it was ordered “canceled”, so no one really won the case. ]Lamprecht AG, which sells a line of baby products under the BiBi name, has won the domain name BiBi.com from Future Media Architects through Uniform domain-name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) gotten the ‘cancelation’ of an FMA domain name through UDRP. The complainant ... read more ...
Wed 31st March 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Novo Nordisk Loses Domain Name Dispute - Healthcare company loses arbitration for domain name. Healthcare giant Novo Nordisk has lost a dispute over the domain name FlexTouch.com. Novo Nordisk filed a complaint with World Intellectual Property Organization to get the domain name based on its 2008 and 2009 trademark filings for “FlexTouch”. The current domain owner acquired the domain name after the trademarks were filed. Novo Nordisk argued that the respondent was a “professional domainer” who should ... read more ...
Mon 29th March 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Kraft Wins Philadelphia.es Domain Name - Kraft awarded domain name for cream cheese brand. Kraft, maker of Philadelphia cream cheese, has been awarded the domain name Philadelphia.es by an arbitration panel at World Intellectual Property Organization. Isn’t Philadelphia a generic term, meaning the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania? Perhaps. But the domain owner didn’t respond to the allegations in the case. He could have easily responded to the charges, arguing that he planned to set up a tourism ... read more ...
Sun 21st March 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Altria Gets a Hit with Marijuana Domain Name Dispute - Tobacco company scores a hit with marijuana domains. In December I wrote about how Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris, had filed a complaint to get the domain names AltriaCannabis.com and AltriaMarijuana.com. The company won the case at World Intellectual Property Forum against Daniel Cheng of Washington, D.C., and the domain names should be transferred to Altria’s possession shortly. As I noted in the earlier article, the domain names each had web sites ... read more ...
Tue 16th March 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Another French City Loses Fight for Geo Domain Name - Tignes loses domain name dispute for Tignes.com. Ah, France. Beautiful vistas, tasty food, and governments that think they have all rights to their city names. Following in the footsteps of Paris, Tignes has lost a UDRP for the domain name Tignes.com. Commune de Tignes originally filed a complaint against the domain owners in Tribunal de grande instance de Lyon (French Court), arguing that the domain name infringed the Complainant’s figurative trademark TIGNES. ... read more ...
Mon 15th March 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New UDRP Goes into Effect Today – Still No Response from ICANN - Yes, we do disagree on that. I think that if we *had to* balance the interests, I do not hold domain owners up as more important than ethical and free trade. But, I can respect your position as being simply one of differing values. However, I don’t see that any legitimate registrants could possibly be harmed by this. *Legitimate* registrants are those who stay far from others’ IP rights and who update their Whois information. Seems kind of easy to do. Also, I disagree with ... read more ...
Mon 1st March 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Baby Products Company Loses Battle Against Bisexual Web Site - Baby products company loses fight with bisexual dating site. UPDATED: Lamprecht AG, which owns the bibi brand of childrens products, has lost its attempt to get the domain name bibibaby.com. What makes this even more interesting is that the domain name was originally registered for a bisexual dating site. The owner of the domain name stated that she registered the domain name because “‘bibibaby is in fact a word play in English referring both to bisexuality ... read more ...
Thu 18th February 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Verdict Reached in PaperSnowflake.com Domain Dispute - This case was over before it even began. I was scratching my head when I saw that someone had filed a UDRP against the owner of PaperSnowflake.com. Who in the world would go after a generic name like that? We now have the answer, but I’m still scratching my head. Patricia Kelley, who owns PaperSnowflakes.com (plural), filed the case. She operates a web site that instructs people on how to create paper snowflakes. With the help of counsel, she tried to argue that ... read more ...
Mon 8th February 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
CNN en Espanol: News Network Wants CNN.es Domain Name - News network wants Spanish domain name. Cable News Network, aka CNN, wants to get its hands on the CNN.es domain name. There’s just one problem: it was registered back in 2005. So the company has filed a domain dispute with World Intellectual Property Organization to try to get the domain name. At the time of writing CNN.es doesn’t resolve to a web site. But the domain’s owner appears to be based in the United Kingdom if his email address is any any indication. ... read more ...
Fri 5th February 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Eyeglass Company Guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking - Eyewear company’s dates don’t add up. Zenni Optical, LLC, a retailer of eyeglasses, has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking by a World Intellectual Property Organization arbitrator. Zenni Optical filed the complaint to get the domain name Zenni.com. But its dates didn’t add up. Zenni.com was registered in May 2002. But Zenni Optical didn’t register trademarks in Zenni and Zenni Optical until 2008 and 2009 respectively. That’s where things ... read more ...
Mon 1st February 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Roche Loses Valium Domain Case - Case recognizes limitations of UDRP. F. Hoffmann-La Roche has lost a domain name dispute for the domain name ValiumNoPrescription.biz in a case that recognizes important limits of the Uniform domain-name Dispute Resolution Process (UDRP). Roche filed more domain disputes under UDRP last year than any other company, and it usually wins without contest. But in this case, even though Valium is a trademark of Roche, UDRP panelist Dan Hunter noted that there’s no way ... read more ...
Tue 19th January 2010
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Cybersquatting Cases Fall in 2009 - Cybersquatting challenges fall in 2009. The number of cybersquatting cases filed under Uniform domain-name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) fell to a three year low in 2009, and the rate of cybersquatting cases compared to the total number of domains registered fell to an all-time low, according to an analysis by Domain name Wire. Data from WIPO, National Arbitration Forum, Czech Arbitration Court, and UDRPSearch, show there were just over 3,700 cases filed in 2009. ... read more ...