April 03, 2007

Legitimate registration of a name on behalf of another person

The name grundke.de was registered by a web agency. It registered this name for a client, which bears the name "Grundke Optik", and then parked the domain name (which directed to the agency's pages).
A third party, which family name is Grundke, sued the agency, and first obtained a motion for dispute from the German domain administration DeNIC which prevented the domain from being transferred. There were two other stages in the case, which eventually was brought before the German Supreme Court. This court ruled that a domain name may lawfully be registered by an agent, and that this may not be disputed by a third party who bears the same name as long as the person who registers is authorized to do so by the legitimate name bearer (No.: I ZR 59/04).

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