A recent WIPO panel ruling shed some new light on adding “sucks” or another derogative term to a trademark.
The case is Air France and the domain AirFranceSucks.com. There are a number of reasons Air France won this case. Some of the reasons are nothing novel: the registrant wasn’t a dissatisifed customer posting complaints, and the page was used to generate revenue from pay-per-click ads. But there was something “new” in this WIPO decision. The WIPO panel decided that Air France is not an international company, and someone that speaks a different language might not realize what “sucks” means. Thus, they might actually believe this web site was run by Air France. That’s actually a good point.
I strongly believe in giving people the right to register derogative domain names if they have a bona fide purpose. For example, if you had a bad at a store, registering storesucks.com and telling about your experience is legit–if you don’t profit from it. This was clearly not the case for AirFranceSucks.com.
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