Posts Tagged ‘Issues’
Legal Issues About Trademarks And Domain Names
Trademarks are the name or symbol used to distinguish the services of one undertaking from others.
As with copyright and other signs of intellectual property rights, the impact of the brand is territorial. This means that each country has its own trademark system. A brand that could be held by Machine Head one person in the UK and another person, completely independent of the United States.
The Domain Name System, which is to put most of his attention. COM as the international field, not really jive well with the system marks due to the basic definition of that “property”.
For example, the Prince vs Prince suit. Prince, the American manufacturers of sports equipment, the use of the disputed domain name www.prince.com [http://www.prince.com] of a British computer consultant. This company is registered as a domain in good faith and has used it. The Prince sports goods company, which has no registered trademark in the United Kingdom, the British threatened to sue the trademark infringement in the United States. The latter counter-sued in the United Kingdom, unwarranted threats regarding trademark infringement. At the end he won and the U.S. had to deal with just using the domain name.
Alternatively, another scenario where the incumbent is likely to outweigh the rights of the holder of the domain name in the case of Marks & Spencer vs One in a Million. This particular case was raised in the English High Court in 1997 when the owners of different brands, including the famous British retailer Marks & Spencer, sued One In A Million, a company that has raised a number of domain names well-known brands such as Sainsburys, Virgin, Marks & Spencer, and Cellnet. These domain names and others were purchased for the express purpose of reselling them to trademark owners. The High Court decided that one in a million will be forced to abandon their claim for domain names said. This decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal.
One company based in the Million argument was that the domain name registrations were first come, first served “basis, thus the brand owners have no rights to domain names.
Based on two actual court cases, we can build a clear picture of the relationship between trademarks and domain names.
In general, areas that have no brand meaning can be acquired by the entity which came first. The continued use of this brand name will not allow the holder to build a reputation in the name. When the situation is among the companies that have a legitimate right to the name, then, as the condition of most of the laws in most countries, the first person who registers will receive the field. However, a person enrolled in an area that is also a question of a brand that does not have rights is prohibited on the basis of the laws of most countries.