BUSINESS
BA wins rights to britishairways.info
29-08-2002
by Andrew McLindon
British Airways has had a .info domain awarded to it by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) after its initial registrant refused to sell it.
British Airways initiated a case against Francis R Grenier and Cadmos LLC of Canada, who held the URLs www.britishairways.info and http://britishairways.info, in early July 2002 alleging that the Web sites had been registered in bad faith.
In mid-February 2002, the www.britishairways.info site was running a message that said, "This site will soon offer interesting informations [sic] for the general public and shareholders regarding the history of the company " alleged British Airways in its WIPO complaint. The site also allegedly said a news and feedback section would soon be available.
In addition, the airline said that the http://britishairways.info site claimed to offer a discussion forum for BA shareholders and also "prominently" broadcast the following message on its home page: "Welcome to BRITISHAIRWAYS." This welcome notice, said BA, was "calculated to mislead customers into believing that the site is "connected" with the airline.
According to WIPO, the domain was registered on or about September 2001 by Cadmos LLC of Canada. Although British Airways had applied for the domain name during the "sunrise" period, which was intended to allow legal owners of .info names to register them before they were made available to the general public, its bid was unsuccessful due to a number of unspecified errors. On 22 October 2001, British Airways became aware that the domain had been registered.
However, it was not until 04 February 2002 that an e-mail approach was made to the registrant to see if he or she would be prepared to sell the domain name, and if so, at what price. The domain's owner, Frank R. Grenier, replied to the inquiry and said that he was not looking to sell the domain. "I'm setting up in my free times [sic] an informative Web site for BA's shareholders. I would have liked to help you with this," he wrote.
British Airways sent several letters of demand during the following month to Grenier, but received no response. On 01 July 2002, British Airways e-mailed a compliant to the WIPO.
The WIPO ruled that the complaint by British Airways was valid because it had demonstrated that it had rights to the trade or service mark used in the domain and that the domain was identical or confusingly similar to the marks. As a result, it ordered the domain to be transferred to British Airways.
Frank R. Grenier could not be contacted for comment.
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