This is the second occasion that the University has been awarded
a domain name from the same person. In May 2000, the man, who also
uses the names “Lord Oxford”, “Mr Oxford”, “Sir Oxford University”,
“Domain Man”, and “Dr Seagle”, was ordered by WIPO to hand over the
domain name oxford-university.com. On that occasion, the WIPO
tribunal had stated that there was no proof that he was in fact
known as “Oxford University”.
The WIPO arbitrator said that the man was using the address to
deliberately tarnish the 800 year old trade mark of Oxford
University and that he had no legitimate interest in the domain
name.
The case is similar to one involving a UK man who registered
wembleystadium.net. He claimed that he had been commonly known as
wembleystadium.net for a number of years on account of his “height
and large skeletal frame”. The domain name was transferred by a
WIPO tribunal to Wembley National Stadium Limited.
In another recent WIPO decision, AOL lost its battle for the
domain name nudescape.com from Canadian company Media Dial which
operates the domain name as a porn site.
AOL argued that the domain name was confusingly similar to its
Netscape trade mark, and that confusion was made even more likely
by the fact that the Nudescape.com site contained a banner which
read “Nudescape.com – The Site of Choice for AOL Users”.
WIPO stated in its ruling that “scape” and “nude” were common
words in the English language, and that AOL’s Netscape trademark
did not prevent others using these words as part of their domain
names.
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