Walmart Company which manages the largest retail store chain in the world won a domain argument at United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Several months ago the trade union representatives registered ReallyWalmart.org domain and placed a website paroding the company’s real website - TheRealWalmart.com. They aimed on criticizing Walmart’s several corporate principles which, according to the trade union, negatively influence the personnel working conditions.
However Walmart didn’t appreciate the parody site’s humor and complained to the World International Property Organization (WIPO). The investigation of the case took several months and the verdict has finally been issued. As WIPO’s jury members noted the site names are similar to confusion degree and can disorient users. Also the fact that ReallyWalmart.org site doesn’t underline its parody helps to that, and vise versa, word “really” can be interpreted as if speaking about Walmart real resource. Finally ReallyWalmart.org site’s design has been admitted as repeating the main elements of TheRealWalmart.com.
Thus according to WIPO’s decision ReallyWalmart.org domain will be passed to Walmart’s management.
