Sep 23
Earlier this week, Lady Gaga lost a domain name dispute trying to grant her the rights to LadyGaga.org from its owner, an avid Lady Gaga fan. The fan website has already been up for three years and clearly states that it is for non-commercial use and is an unofficial fan-site simply dedicated to everything Lady Gaga.
A quick report today that is not entirely surprising: trademark holders have won 93 domain name disputes for the .co extension and lost just one at the World Intellectual Property Organization.
So, who was the one loss? The article has the answer:
The only organization to lose a case is Comite Interprofessionnel du vin de Champagne, which failed to get Champagne.co.
There are a few caveats: National Arbitration Forum cases were not considered because they were not broken down by TLD extension and “terminated” cases were counted as wins.
Even with those caveats, it is an impressive record and demonstrates that cybersquatters who trade off another company’s trademark usually lose.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (better known as ICANN) approved the use of 100′s of new customizable top-level domain names a few months ago. Since that time, companies and internet prognosticators alike have been debating the ramifications of such a dramatic change. Here are the basics:
These new TLD extensions could open a can of worms the internet has not seen for awhile. First, what happens if multiple companies hold the same trademark (think Delta Airlines and Delta Faucets) and both apply for .delta? What happens if Pizza Hut and Dominos both apply for the generic “.pizza” at the same time? ICANN has a process and evaluation factors to resolve these issues, but they do not seem to be specific enough yet to answer these questions.
I would not be surprised to see trademark suits spawning from the new TLDs. We will have much more on this in the coming months.
What are your thoughts?
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