C.S. Lewis Beats off .Mobi Cybersquatter
Thursday, July 24th, 2008
C.S. Lewis estate gets hands on Narnia.mobi.
I have to hand it to Richard Saville-Smith and his family. Ever since the estate of C.S. Lewis, famous for The Chronicles of Narnia books, filed a UDRP against him for registering Narnia.mobi, his family has put on the pity plea with the media.
How could they do this to our child, a big Narnia fan? We only registered it for a personal e-mail address. What horrible big money machine would come after us poor saps?
A couple days ago news broke that C.S. Lewis had prevailed, and the decision was finally posted online today. The one person panel found Saville-Smith to be in the wrong and ordered the domain transfered.
Saville-Smith’s defense, that it was registered for personal use and thus not in bad faith, didn’t hold up. He admitted that he knew it was a famous trademark but felt he could use it if he claimed it wasn’t for commercial gain.
The panelist wrote, “The Respondent has brought to the Panel’s attention no prior panel decisions that support the proposition that a respondent may establish rights or legitimate interests in a domain name that appropriates another’s distinctive and widely known trademark by registering the domain name for prospective use as a personal email address, or by the actual use of the domain name for this purpose.”
He continued, “the Panel cannot envision any plausible, good faith basis upon which the Respondent could have concluded that he was free to appropriate the Complainant’s distinctive and widely known NARNIA mark for use as a personal email address.”
The panel also said there’s a clear distinction between creating an active fan or criticism site and the planned use for Narnia.mobi.
It also looks like the respondent shot himself in the foot by mentioning he registered several other .mobi domains at the same time. After doing research, the complainant found that he had registered other trademarks including drwho.mobi.
Further Reading:
I’m sorry, but why/how is a father who regged a name for his kid, a cybersquatter??? Bad choice in title imo.
LOL Interesting headline, Andrew.
Hawk, I seriously doubt that’s why he registered this domain. He registered other trademark domains at the same time, mostly in the entertainment space. I think this was an excuse.
But it’s always fun to use the term cybersquatter in a headline
This was blatant cybersquatting. Richard Saville-Smith even had the name parked at Sedo. Come on.
cant wait for the new TLDs when domains will sprout like dandelions.
then hopefully these companies and characters will stop their bitching once and for all, after all there will not be much they could do.
@ Shaun – to be fair, he didn’t actually park it at Sedo. His domain registrar did without his knowledge. But I agree with your overall assessment.
lol DomainNameWire goes .xxx
[...] Presumably, those were all for little Comrie too… We think the headline used by the cynics at DomainWire.com is more accurate: “C.S. Lewis Beats off .Mobi Cybersquatter.” Tagged with: How [...]
[...] Presumably, those were all for little Comrie too… We think the headline used by the cynics at DomainWire.com is more accurate: “C.S. Lewis Beats off .Mobi [...]
You should’ve seen the other responses to this in other places. Not surprising a lot of people seem to side with the respondent, but that’s to be expected when they hardly care to understand what this is all about.
David – the mainstream media really sucked this one up. Some of the headlines were amazing, talking about the “big lawyers” taking a domain away from “the little kid”.
Rumors are that Jay Z is trying to buy HipHop.mobi from its owner for a 6 figure