A U.N. arbitrator has ordered five Internet domain names held by an Iran-based company turned over to Reuters PLC, the World Intellectual Property Organization said Thursday.
The arbitrator, Andrew F. Christie of Australia, ordered the handover of wwwreuters.com, reters.com, ruters.com, reuers.com and reutersnews.com to the news organization, upholding Reuters' complaint against Global Net 2000, Inc., a business located in the Iranian capital, Tehran.
The addresses were registered by Network Solutions, Inc. of Herndon, Va.
The London-based Reuters argued that the Global Net 2000 "used the Reuters mark to drive visitors to its Web site by forwarding visitors entering the domain names in issue to its site, www.global2000.com." It said the Iranian company had "exhibited a pattern of cybersquatting behavior."
"The respondent thus attempts to generate commercial gain by creating confusion as to the affiliation of its Web hosting and pornographic services with the Reuters mark," it added - an assertion the arbiter said was not established as a matter of fact.
GlobalNet 2000 failed to respond to Reuters' complaint, and Christie found that no special circumstances explained that. The respondent failed to provide evidence of circumstances "giving rise to a right to or legitimate interest in the domain names," he said.
Answering the question of whether names are confusingly similar "is not without some difficulty," Christie conceded in his ruling.
In the case of reuers.com, "whilst some of the plausible pronunciations of this word are similar to the pronunciation of the Complainants trademark, others are not," he added. But a visual comparison provides "the strongest support" for the complaint.
In another ruling released Thursday, U.N. arbiter Frederick M. Abbott ordered that the domain name microsof.com be handed over to computer giant Microsoft Corp. The name was registered by Tarek Ahmed of Brooklyn, N.Y.
"The term 'microsof' is very similar to 'microsoft' in its visual impression," the ruling stated. "Pronunciation of the two terms is very similar."
The Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft thus succeeded in demonstrating that the domain name is "identical or confusingly similar to a trademark in which the Complainant has rights," it said.
