Can a company claim the rights to all domains that contain the characters of their name? For example could IBM claim the ownership of the domain name IBMmirrors.com or aarp contain the ownership of a domain name such as aarpsports.com? As far as I know, neither company has attempted to claim the above. I made these examples up to illustrate my question. I am just interested in how far a company can legally go in claiming domains that use the characters of their business but are being used in different business modes. I read an article in the paper last month that raised my curiosity as to this question but not enough to pay for the answer .
Of course they can. You can also claim ownership to some other domain name held by someone else. But demonstrating your claims and winning that dispute, now that's a different thing. Especially if a careful review of all and any available facts indicate you have little to no chances of success. If the domain name's current site, if any, shows any hint of commercial usage that's similar, related, or associated in any way with that of a trademark, then they're potentially infringing it. The trademark holder will then have grounds to take action. Then again, there are some parties who insist on believing they have rights to every domain name bearing their trademarked word (like easy and stealth). It so happens they have deep pockets to enforce their beliefs and force many parties to bend over. That's life.
I think the answer depends on what the trademark actually is. I remember not so long ago in the UK the Virgin group (as in Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Trains, Virgin Records, Virgin Cola etc) tried to take legal proceedings against a small businessman who was using the name Virgin in his business title. The problem was the the man in question, a painter and decorator, was actually called Mr Virgin and he had been trading under his family name for decades - far longer than Richard Branson's Virgin group had even existed. Commonsense prevailed that time, so I suppose not all decisions go the way of big business.
I realize that anybody can claim anything if they have the money to pay the attorneys to defend their claims. I should have provided a few more details but I don’t want to inadvertently identify the company involved. The article that caught my attention talked about a company that markets to one market segment with general information for that market segment and promotes affiliate products to that market segment through their web site and advertising. They don't own the products they promote but have some type of association with the owners of the products. I don't know how they get paid and that's really not the issue that caught my attention.. They claimed that since they had trademarked the letters that represented their legal name they had ownership to any domain name using those letters combined with a product that could be marketed to their general membership. It did not matter whether or not they were currently marketing that product to their membership since the use of those letters associated with a product was a violation of their trademark. This claim appears to be a bit of a stretch to me. It would appear to me that another company whose name was represented by those same letters could market products using those letters combined with the product they sold. But as I said it was only curiosity on my part that prompted this post. I appreciate your answers
Your post actually gave a clue: Note the UDRP decision below: http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2000/d2000-1364.html Then look at how this one turned out: http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2000/d2000-1604.html UDRP filings, like Court cases, are fact-intensive, and treated case to case. Could you perhaps post that article? Hopefully it got its facts straight.
Actually it wasn't AOL. I will try and find the article, scan it and post it. I don't guarantee the facts are straight. It was a small town newspaper that ran the article and I don't live in that small town. But I appreciate you providing this information. While I understand each case stands on its own merit the ruling you provided in the AOL case is what I thought would be the case. It did not seem reasonable that a company could make such a broad claim of ownership of any domain that contained the letters of its trademark, especially when it was not marketing the product under discussion. Thanks again.
Well, there's no law saying it's illegal to become an unreasonable jerk. The company whose letters you gave me earlier could mean anything. It's up to them if they want to force the issue or not. That's why we have checks and balances.
There's a UDRP decision where 2 competitors joined forces to nab the domain name, though I'm trying to recall the exact one.
Wasn't that Coke and Pepsi? I know I've read about it a while ago, but I'm not sure if it was Coke and Pepsi. I'll go search and see if I can find it.