EasyMobile.com, a no-frills service run by easyGroup in
partnership with Dutch telco TDC, claimed to have sparked a "mobile
war" when it entered the UK market. Orange sued over its use of the
colour orange – an action that easyMobile.com described as absurd.
Virgin Mobile declared that its offering contained "hidden nasties"
and made "a complete mockery" of easyMobile's promise of no hidden
charges – which easyMobile.com dismissed as a panic reaction by
Virgin.
And now The Carphone Warhouse has provoked Stelios with its
website at easiermobile.com, a name it registered on the day that
easyMobile.com launched.
The site – still live at the time of writing – consists of one
page only, showing an image of a jet plane in the green and white
livery of 'fresh,' the mobile service from The Carphone Warehouse
that takes on easyMobile.com's pricing plan. Beneath the image is
the message:
"The Carphone Warehouse doesn't try to run airlines, it sells
mobile phones. Fresh, the mobile phone service from The Carphone
Warehouse, has established itself as the cheapest in the market and
with our new 'triple your top up' promotion, we offer calls to any
network for 5p and any text for
1.7p How easy is that?"
The only mention of Easier Mobile in the page is its title:
"Easier Mobile from The Carphone Warehouse". The page links to the
sales pages of The Carphone Warehouse – with no further mentions of
'easy' or 'easier'.
EasyGroup IP Licensing Limited – owner of 500 trade marks and
ever-vigilant guardian of all things 'easy'– took a cybersquatting
claim to the World Intellectual Property Organisation. Its action
was against PSINet UK, an ISP which appeared to have registered the
name on behalf of The Carphone Warehouse.
EasyGroup pointed to the reference to airlines and the fact The
Carphone Warehouse service is known as 'Fresh' – not
EasierMobile.com. It also said that its rival had registered the
keywords "easyMobile" and "easiermobile" on Google and Yahoo!, "in
a further attempt to redirect internet users".
The Carphone Warehouse countered that Stelios cannot monopolise
the descriptive and generic words 'easy' and 'mobile', that his
company does not have registered trade marks in easymobile, and
that, given it only launched in March 2005, easyMobile.com cannot
be described as "well-known". It also said the reference to
airlines was lawful comparative advertising.
WIPO panellist Nasser Ali Khasawneh, a lawyer from Dubai,
reckoned easyGroup had trade mark rights in easyMobile.com, viewing
it in the context of the other 'easy' businesses. He also reckoned
that The Carphone Warehouse had no rights in easiermobile.com –
viewing its website as "an obvious mocking referral" to easyGroup's
"famous easyJet business." Convinced that the name was registered
primarily to disrupt a rival's business, he ordered its
transfer.
