Font size:
Page background:
Letter spacing:
Images:
Disable visually impaired version close
Version for visually impaired people
News

Saudi oil company tries to save on domain

Saudi oil company, Saudi Aramco, lost its case over the Orizon.com domain name at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). According to Domain Name Wire, Saudi Aramco filed documents to register its new brand Orizon last year and, of course, decided that Orizon.com would be useful. However, this domain had already been registered. The company seemed alright with it and simply filed a cybersquatting complaint under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) to try to prove the domain had been registered illegally and was infringing on the trademark rights.

It is not clear why one of the richest companies in the world (Saudi Aramco reported net income of $412 billion this year) couldn’t find the money for skilled lawyers that would have advised them not to turn to WIPO. The investigation concluded that Orizon.com was registered by a US company Orizon Multimedia Inc. in 1997 and was used for its website until 2010 when it shut down. So Saudi Aramco filed a complaint against a domain name registered more than 20 years before its brand appeared.

It was not difficult for WIPO panelist Nick Gardner to deny the appeal. Moreover, Saudi Aramco could have been accused of reverse domain name theft. However, it didn’t get to that because the owner of Orizon Multimedia Inc., who is also the domain owner, passed away last year, so he couldn’t be harmed by Saudi Aramco’s complaint.

Previous News Next news