Domain name disputes

Trademark infringement
Infringement on trademarks is unfortunately a very common occurrence in the world of commerce. Competing businesses try to gain benefits from the trademarks or firms of others. Even if you have not yet been affected, you have surely heard of cases where others have been affected.

Law of the jungle on the web?
The answer to that question is No. There are several simple ways to prevent this from happening. But even if it happens, it is possible to gain control over domain names that have already been registered by someone else.

This will be briefly described in the following column.

A trademark/firm will not automatically be protected on the Internet even if it is registered with authorities. Anyone, like a private person or a company can register domain names associated with these. But this does not give the person or legal person the right to keep the domain if the trademark/firm is registered and thereby protected.

A few criteria have to be fulfilled in order to prove that a domain related to a trademark/firm belongs to you:

1. You have a strong right to posses the domain, i.e. the trademark/firm belongs to you. For example; a trademark containing a word is easier to uphold the right to as compared to a “picture”, “collective”, “outfit” or “sound”.
2. The person or legal person currently possessing the domain does not have a legitimate right to it, e.g. makes use of it to benefit from your trademarks/firms.
3. The purpose was at the time of registration to use the domain name in bad faith. They know that the trademark is well known and that the owner of this probably wants to register it in the future.

What are the steps to settle a dispute concerning a domain?
RIKTAD assists the customer with the required inquiry. The first step is to find out who registered the domain and the purpose of the registration. We inform the current owner on which possible infringement of the law they commit. Thereafter, a lawyer is consulted. The different rules applied for different suffixes is utilized in investigating the possibility to get the domain released to the customer. The last step is to let WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation) resolve the dispute. WIPO is the highest authority and is appointed ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) to judge in disagreements concerning domain names.