Hi everyone,
first time on this forum. Thought I'd bring some good news to everyone regarding a domain name dispute I had recently with RAC - Royal Automobile Club and won. Case was arbitratted by Nominet UK. I have posted below an article on the dispute from The Scotsman newspaper, more information on costs, times etc. will be added if people are interetsted.
racrally.com
Rally fan pips the RAC to the post in domain name dispute
Internet domain names are by no means the preserve of the big guns. As a spate of recent cases emerging from Scotland have demonstrated, there is a lot of scope for private individuals who believe in what they are doing to take on established, and usually well-resourced, organisations and win.
Earlier this year there was the case of Irving Remocker, the Glasgow businessman who successfully fought off financial giants CGU over his chess website domain name, yourmove.com, at the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organisation Arbitration and Mediation Centre, the main arbitration provider for dotcom domain name and other internet-related disputes.
Now comes the case of Wishaw-based motor rallying enthusiast Kevin McTear, who registered and operated an internet website to promote his interest in rallying throughout the UK, and has won a domain name ownership dispute with RAC Motoring Services.
In a judgment late last month, Nominet, the body responsible for regulating the use of all "uk" domain names, rejected the RAC’s complaint that Mr McTear was not entitled to use of his registered domain name, racrally.co.uk,
Mr McTear, a manager with NTL, is a life-long rallying fan. Early in 2000, he and a friend, Patrick Heggarty, set up the website for fellow rallying enthusiasts to share their interest throughout the UK.
To reflect the website’s content, they decided to choose as a domain name an acronym of the phrase "Race Around the Country". Shortly afterwards, they found that the domain names racrally.co.uk and racrally.org.uk were available.
RAC Motoring Services complained that it had used the trademark "RAC" for around 100 years and that it had been used extensively in connection with roadside recovery services and associated events such as rallies. Mr McTear, it contended, had no right to use the name of an event with which it was intimately associated.
Just like Mr Remocker, McTear faced up to the RAC’s complaint, knowing that unlike in a UK court, the Nominet panel before which the dispute was held does not award costs, even to the successful party to the dispute. In the event, the RAC was hampered by the fact that it had no registered trademark in "RAC Rally".
Even if it had any common law rights, these were entirely historical - they related to an event the RAC sponsored several years ago. The RAC does not have a current connection with the event, to the extent that it has even let the subsequent sponsors, Vauxhall Network Q, use a domain name similar to
McTear’s.
McTear never under-estimated the enormity of the undertaking. He said: "Taking on a major organisation was a nerve-wracking experience, but since the domain name was available and we were prepared to put a great many hours into establishing and developing the website, we believed we were entitled to hold onto it.
"Our legal advisers, too, believed in us, and that helped give us the confidence to defend the complaint."
As legal advisers to many legitimate owners of domain names, we have always counselled that given the relatively low costs of registering a domain name, it makes sense to own as many permutations of your own trading style as you can possibly think of.
In the case of our firm, we must own two dozen or so registered domain names all of which are variations on the theme that we are MacRoberts and that we are a Scottish law firm with offices in Glasgow and Edinburgh with specialisms in internet law.
So, since even the moderately successful entrepreneur tends to have a clutch of business interests, anyone wise enough to take our professional advice, could easily end up registering 40, 50, 60 or more domain names. Far from speculation, the ownership of so many domain names is a protective measure to prevent others from duplicating your trading style.
A recent initiative to introduce an internet domain names code, Incop, has been launched by Nominet, which aims to cut down on the numbers of those prepared to speculate in domain name ownership in the anticipation that they will be able to cash-in when established organisations come along and acquire them.
The objective is a laudable one, but without any teeth it is difficult to see how rogue domain name buyers will be deterred. Piracy of domain names is an inevitable concomitant of a rapidly developing global phenomenon, though how long into the future it is likely to continue as a major issue is anyone’s guess.
Elaine Gray is an Associate at MacRoberts, solicitors, and specialises in
litigation matters.
Monday, 11th June 2001
The Scotsman
first time on this forum. Thought I'd bring some good news to everyone regarding a domain name dispute I had recently with RAC - Royal Automobile Club and won. Case was arbitratted by Nominet UK. I have posted below an article from The Scotsman newspaper, more information on costs, times etc. will be added if people are interetsted.-19 Jun 2001
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