December 07, 2004

Important decision of the German Supreme Court on generic domain names

According to The Register, the German Supreme Court "has ruled that merely registering generic terms as domain names does not constitute an unethical intent to cause damage... The court says that registering domain names is typically based on a first-come, first-served principle. The resulting advantage for the person who registers first can thus not be seen as unethical, the Court argues."
A publishing group sued a man who registered 4,000 domain names, among which weltonline.de, that the complainant deemed similar to the trademark Die Welt it uses for a newspaper. The court did not follow the complainant's arguments.

[UPDATE: See also this comment on the IPKat blog]



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