The company loses domain disputes due to an article in the title
The Limited, a well-known clothing manufacturer from the United States, has recently been plagued by setbacks in the domain of disputes. The reason for this was ... the presence of a definite article "The" in the name of the company. From the point of view of language, the presence or absence of the article does not affect the meaning of the word. When addressing trademark issues, this “trifle” also, as a rule, does not pay much attention. But in the case of The Limited, WIPO decided otherwise.
In July of this year, The Limited filed a protest against the application for registration of the top-level domain .limited as part of the New gTLD program. WIPO rejected the plaintiff’s claim for the reason that the domain name (limited) is different from the company name (The Limited). According to the Commission, although the article does not affect the meaning of the word, in this case it was his absence in the domain name that influenced its decision. "Limited" is a common vocabulary word, but only its writing with the article out of context ("The Limited") suggests that it is a question of an American company and its trademark. The commission also drew attention to the fact that the official website of the company is thelimited.com, and the domain limited.com is used only for redirection.
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And recently, The Limited suffered another setback - it failed to dispute the domain limitedcoupons.com with its owner. The motives of the commission’s decision were the same: Limited is a dictionary word, and the domain name does not have the article “the”. There would be no special claims to the commission’s decision, but, first, the domain is clearly cybersquatting: The Limited has been actively distributing coupons for many years. Secondly, the domain owner did not even speak out in defense of his rights - he did not respond to the complaint from The Limited at all. In such cases, the decision is almost always made in favor of the claimant, except for completely unreasonable claims.
Few could have imagined that the article in the name of the company could create so many problems when it is promoted on the Internet. In this regard, it is impossible not to mention the decision of the founder of Facebook social network Mark Zuckerberg, who once got rid of the article in the name of his company and in its domain name. Initially, the social network was called The Facebook, and it was posted at www.thefacebook.com .
In July of this year, The Limited filed a protest against the application for registration of the top-level domain .limited as part of the New gTLD program. WIPO rejected the plaintiff’s claim for the reason that the domain name (limited) is different from the company name (The Limited). According to the Commission, although the article does not affect the meaning of the word, in this case it was his absence in the domain name that influenced its decision. "Limited" is a common vocabulary word, but only its writing with the article out of context ("The Limited") suggests that it is a question of an American company and its trademark. The commission also drew attention to the fact that the official website of the company is thelimited.com, and the domain limited.com is used only for redirection.
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And recently, The Limited suffered another setback - it failed to dispute the domain limitedcoupons.com with its owner. The motives of the commission’s decision were the same: Limited is a dictionary word, and the domain name does not have the article “the”. There would be no special claims to the commission’s decision, but, first, the domain is clearly cybersquatting: The Limited has been actively distributing coupons for many years. Secondly, the domain owner did not even speak out in defense of his rights - he did not respond to the complaint from The Limited at all. In such cases, the decision is almost always made in favor of the claimant, except for completely unreasonable claims.
Few could have imagined that the article in the name of the company could create so many problems when it is promoted on the Internet. In this regard, it is impossible not to mention the decision of the founder of Facebook social network Mark Zuckerberg, who once got rid of the article in the name of his company and in its domain name. Initially, the social network was called The Facebook, and it was posted at www.thefacebook.com .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/192336/
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