Friday, 06-Apr-2001
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LONDON, ONTARIO, CANADA, 2001 APRIL 6 ..... In a move that would make most marketers cringe, an icon of chain-store retailing in Canada is asking an international intellectual property organization to rule that, when shoppers say "Crappy Tire," they really mean "Canadian Tire."
Toronto-based Canadian Tire Corp., much of the country's ubiquitous source for everything from motor oil to last-minute Christmas gifts, is moving to claim the Internet domain CrappyTire.com from automobile recycler Mick McFadden of London, Ontario.
McFadden doesn't rank as a major Internet domain cybersquatter, and he told Newsbytes that he can't imagine why the Canadian retailing giant would want an address like CrappyTire.com.
Still, the company has turned to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a United Nations agency, to hear its complaint over McFadden's use of the domain.
WIPO's Arbitration and Mediation Center is one of four organizations around the world assigned to settle complaints under a relatively speedy dispute-processing system established by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
ICANN's Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) is designed to help sort out conflicts between the current holders of a domain name and those who feel the address should belong to them - often because of they own a similar trademark.
McFadden said he admits he used his CrappyTire.com domain as a sort of anti-Canadian-Tire protest site, posting comparison pricing to illustrate his claim that the retailing giant's prices were often higher than alternate sources.
One of the fundamental rules of the UDRP process is that those filing complaints must prove that they have trademark rights to the name represented by the Internet domain in dispute.
UDRP arbitrators - and WIPO's in particular - have awarded many decisions to business and individuals who were deemed to have "common law" trademarks, such as the rights of US actress Julia Roberts to her famous name in JuliaRoberts.com.
UDRP decisions have also frequently awarded to copyright holders so-called protest domains that simply modified a well-known trademark, such as Wal-MartSucks.com, DirectLineSucks.com, and even Guiness-beer-really-really-sucks.com.
But Canadian Tire is in the unique position of attempting to prove that a pejorative nickname could be a common-law trademark.
To do that, McFadden said, the complaint filed with WIPO describes how Canadian Tire's legal team used Internet search engines to confirm just how common the phrase "Crappy Tire" is among Canadians as a "light-hearted" synonym for the retailer.
McFadden said the company approached him with an offer to buy the domain, which he said he refused.
McFadden holds a number of more-generic Internet domains, ranging from several along the lines of Ontario4Sale.com, to BustyCanadianTeens.com and BadCops.com.
Reported by Newsbytes.com,
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http://www.newsbytes.com .
Only in Canada, eh ? Did we lead the way back in 2001 with stupidity on trademark names???
A recent search on Wayback and the net failed to get me any results and I have also failed to find end results to this action
But they now really live up to their street name of being Crappy Tire!
