July 2005
Air France 'sucks' up to the World Intellectual Property Organisation
The domain name airfrancesucks.com was registered by a Florida-based Virtual Dates Inc. in 1999 and it wasn't until February 2005 that Air France took a claim before the World Intellectual Property Organisation, alleging cybersquatting. The decision published stated that the domain is to be transferred to Air France.
For the past six years, Virtual Dates Inc pointed the domain name at a page of ePinions.com, an ad-supported site that rates and invites reader's comments on everything from movies through to office supplies to tourism. It stated that airfrancesucks.com was a freedom of expression site for the registration of complaints or recommendations about the airline.
BRIFFA Comment:
If a third party registers a domain name which you perceive as "yours", there are means of dealing with the problem which are less costly than litigation. Nominet has established a Dispute Resolution Service for resolution of disputes over entitlement to hold or use ".uk" domain names. Further information can be obtained from the website at http://www.nominet.org.uk/DisputeResolution/AboutTheDrs/.
Disputes relating to global top level domain names (e.g. ".com") are dealt with under a policy established by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) by a number of arbitrating bodies, including the World Intellectual Property Organisation ("WIPO").
A confusingly similar trade mark is not in itself sufficient to force a transfer. It must also be shown that the registrant has no rights or legitimate interests in the domain name and that its registration and use were in bad faith. If the decision panel are convinced that a domain name is not confusingly similar to a trade mark, the rest of a cybersquatting claim will fail. The panel decided that the domain in this case was confusingly similar to Air France's trade mark.
The incorporation of a well-known trade mark in its entirety as the first and dominant part of a domain name is confusingly similar to this trade mark regardless of whether the additional elements are pejorative as in this case or of a more neutral kind such as "airfrancetickets".