The scare started when Twitter contacted a company with a web-based Twitter-related service that used the name “tweet” in it. The UI is very similar to Twitter’s, and in combination with the name, Twitter felt that it was too much. Without such similarity, however, the company promises other projects and services are safe.

For those who offer harmful or illegitimate services, however, Twitter reserves the right to pursue necessary action against them. That would include domain name disputes, if the situation arises. The company is also a little more particular about domains that have the word “Twitter” in them, as this is apparently a step above “tweet” in its closeness and similarity to their trademark.

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Both names are trademarks of the corporation, and the organization jointly challenged the registration with its subsidiary, G D Searle. According to some reports, Pfizer had previously registered the domains, along with approximately 50 others, only to allow the domains to expire. The domains were then placed on an auction list. While some names, such as Viagra.org, were returned to Pfizer, others were snatched up by people like Kumar.

The WIPO ordered Kumar to turn over the domains to Pfizer. It is unclear why Pfizer allowed their .org domains to expire only to re-register and raise disputes over them later on. Registering domains similar to registered corporate trademarks and then selling them for profit is an illegal practice known as cybersquatting. Pfizer is one of the worlds largest pharmaceutical companies, with offices in 150 countries.

Source: Sify
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Webadviso referred to themselves as “domainers” and argued that they had the right to park domains and generate pay-per-click revenue. BOFAML argued that the ordering of the letters is too similar to the combined registered trademarks of the merged companies. Webadviso contended that “BOFA” stands for “two highly regarded Chinese characters meaning treasure (bo) and rich (fa).

The arbitrators found that bofaml.com and mlbofa.com must be transferred to the merged corporation, whereas bofamerrill.com and merrillbofa.com would not. The first two, the forum said, were too close to the “Bank of America” trademark (bofa) and should be handed over to them. The latter two, however, were not similar to any registered trademarks since, even though the companies had merged, the names are from two separate registered trademarks. Furthermore, there is no indication that Bank of America intends to use that combination of names.

Source: UDRPSearch
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“Save for the addition/deletion of a single letter, the disputed domain names are visually and phonetically identical to the famous blackberry trademark, which also supports a finding of confusion,” RIM had contended before the WIPO.

The World Intellectual Property Right Organization, based in Geneva, ordered all three of the domains to be transfered to RIM.

Source: The Economic Times

Photo: Flickr