Facebok Wins WIPO Case For Face-Book.com

Facebook Wins Domain Case Against Sephora

As I reported last month, Facebook had filed a domain name dispute with the World Intellectual Property Organization over the domain name, Face-Book.com. It now appears that they have won the case and are now the new owners of Face-Book.com.

On ” Identical or Confusingly Similar” the arbitrator writes:

The disputed domain name was registered on October 3, 2004, i.e. quite possibly before the Complainant acquired any trademark rights in the FACEBOOK Marks (it is unclear from the provided material when exactly the Complainant first acquired rights in the European Community Trademark for FACEBOOK, which as noted previously has a registration date of June 13, 2003). However, Paragraph 4(a)(i) of the Policy does not require that the trademark be registered prior to the domain name. See AB Svenska Spel v. Andrey Zacharov, WIPO Case No. D2003-0527; MADRID 2012, S.A. v. Scott Martin-MadridMan Websites, WIPO Case No. D2003-0598. The fact that the disputed domain name predates the Complainant’s trademark registration is only relevant to the assessment of bad faith pursuant to Paragraph 4(a)(iii) of the Policy, which is considered below.

What strikes me the most about this case is that generic names are typical difficult to claim in copyright or trademark infringement cases. In addition, Sephora had registered the domain name in 2001, years before Facebook was even around - however it seems the domain was registered by someone else in 2004, information that I was unable to find. While I won’t sit here and bore you with the intricacies of domain name law, this news does reinforce the fact that Facebook is so hot that they are powerful enough to win cases that most other companies would never win.

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