24 June 2013

When a domain name is a trade mark - realestate.com.au

Interesting case from Australia on trademarks and domain names--

realestate.com.au: When a domain name is a trade mark - Media, Telecoms, IT, Entertainment - Australia: " . . . However, REA Group Ltd v Real Estate 1 Ltd is an example where the top level domain is an intrinsic part of the brand, and the entirety of the domain name needs to be considered to establish if there is deceptive similarity. The applicants (collectively, REA) accepted that "real estate" was purely descriptive, yet contended that the combination of "real estate" with ".com.au" created a term which was distinctive of REA's residential property portal. . . . however, there is a real danger of confusion in relation to "realestate1.com.au". In the context of domain names and the scanning process that occurs when looking at a search results page, the "1" in realestate1.com.au is not very distinctive and was likely to be missed. As a result, the realestate1.com.au domain name was deceptively similar to realestate.com.au and constituted trade mark infringement. . . ." (read more at link above)

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