Arbitrary Center of World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva took part of informational agency ITAR-TASS in domain argument concerning ITARTASS.COM domain. ITAR-TASS submitted the complaint to WIPO’s Arbitrary Center for this domain administrator’s actions this June.
Russia’s largest informational agency ITAR-TASS exists as good as since 1904 and with its current name since 1994. ITAR-TASS’ trademarks were registered since 1996 to 2000. As for the domain’s administrator it was fairly specified that he lives in Saint-Petersburg and uses P.O.B. at Glavpochtamt for business. The administrator’s secretiveness became an additional argument in the judgement whether the domain has been used dishonestly. However the decisive circumstance became the fact that WIPO’s arbitrary board found the domain name similar to confusion degree with ITAR-TASS trademark and stated that the defendant doesn’t have any legal rights to use this name.
According to the decision of WIPO’s arbitrary board ITARTASS.com domain will be passed to ITAR-TASS agency whose interests in court were represented by attorney Anton Sergo, Head of “Internet and Law” legal firm. Anton Sergo refused to comment on the case.
