WIPOsquat: U.N. Organization Caught Cybersquatting

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

WIPO caught cybersquatting on trademarked term.


Pot, meet kettle.

World Intellectual Property Organization, one of the providers of domain name arbitration services under UDRP, seems to have a cybersquatting problem of its own.

Domain name attorney John Berryhill came across this apparent hypocrisy when he noticed the domain name Patentscape.info forwards to WIPO.int.

Patentscape is a trademark of law firm Needle & Rosenberg, P.C. Think “patent landscape”.

Patentscape.info forwards to WIPO’s Patentscope product (notice “scope” instead of “scape”).

Patentscape.info is registered to United Nations International Computing Centre, which handles domain names for the United Nations and its organizations, which includes World Intellectual Property Organization:

Domain Name: PATENTSCAPE.INFO
Created On: 15-Apr-2008 13:22:10 UTC
Registrant Name: International Computing Centre
Registrant Organization: UNICC Call Centre
Registrant Street1: Palais des Nations
Registrant City: Geneva 10
Registrant Postal Code:1211
Registrant Country:CH

The domain name points to the United Nations’ and WIPO’s name servers.

WIPO owns the correct version of its trademark in several TLDs, including Patentscope.net, org, and info. Perhaps it was frustrated that Patentscope.com forwards to a patent attorney’s web site at Patent.org.

Bonus question: If Needle & Rosenberg, P.C. filed for arbitration on this domain, would it use WIPO or National Arbitration Forum?

Further Reading:

  1. Cybersquatting Cases Fall in 2009
  2. Is Cybersquatting Up or Just Enforcement of Cybersquatting?

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3 Comments » - Posted in Policy & Law by

Comments

  1. Alexandar Tzanov
    March 5th, 2009 | 12:16 pm

    I would like to point out that this is more of a case of typosquatting than cybersquatting.

  2. Alexandar Tzanov
    March 5th, 2009 | 12:18 pm

    Technicalities, but they are still important. :)

  3. Dave Zan
    March 6th, 2009 | 4:09 am

    If Needle & Rosenberg filed a UDRP with WIPO, they’re nuts. :)

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