Yesterday brought two pieces of news at once regarding the Japanese automotive giant, Nissan, and related domain names. Domain Name Wire has reported that the domain names Nissan.com and Nissan.net have been returned to their rightful owners - and it's not Nissan. This story began back in the 90s of the last century, when a native of Israel, Uzi Nissan, founded a company in the USA and registered his domains. A few years later, representatives of a Japanese company contacted him and offered to sell domain names. Uzi Nissan categorically refused.
Then Nissan sued him, demanding not only to transfer the domain names to it, but also to pay compensation of $10 million for illegal use of its trademark. This legal battle lasted for 8 years and cost Uzi Nissan more than $3 million in attorney fees. However, justice triumphed: the court eventually recognized that Nissan did not violate the rights of the Japanese company Nissan in any way, but has every right to the domain names Nissan.com and Nissan.net, since they correspond to his last name.
In 2020, Uzi Nissan died from complications after suffering from COVID-19. And soon his heirs reported that unknown people had hacked the account and stolen the domains, transferring them to another registrant. This time, American justice took a little less time to restore justice: on April 16, the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that domain names should be returned to the heirs of Uzi Nissan.
And by a curious coincidence, on the same day it became known that Nissan had begun a new “blast furnace campaign.” This time, her target was the domain name Nissan.ai in the extremely popular Anguilla country code today. As reported by the Domain Investing, the company has filed a complaint against the domain with the World Intellectual Property Organization and intends to receive it under the Uniform Domain Dispute Resolution Policy UDRP. Very little is known about the Nissan.ai: it was registered in July 2020 and has likely not been used since - or at least not currently responding to queries. The registrant's data is hidden by privacy settings, and Nissan probably has a chance to win at least this case. Unless, of course, it turns out that the registrant's last name is Nissan.
