Paris Attacks Geo Domain Name Owners
Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
Paris entity attacks generic domain names, including two domains that include the word “Paris”.
In a startling move, a quasi-governmental organization in Paris, France, has filed domain disputes against owners of generic domain names including the word “Paris” that have to do with internet access.
Ville de Paris filed cases against three domain names: WifiParis.com, Wifi-Paris.com, and Parvi.org.
In a 2008 dispute for the domain name VilledeParis.com, the organization described itself as “a public body established for the specific purpose of meeting needs in the general interest and not having an industrial or commercial character; in particular the Complainant is in charge of many missions of public-utilities notably in the fields of communication and information about activities available in the city of Paris.”
It appears that the organization may be behind a project called “Parvi” that will offer free Wifi in Paris.
WifiParis.com is owned by Salient Properties, which purchased Wifi.com and entered into a partnership with Domain Strategies to develop the domain name. WifiParis.com is a web site powered by Wifi.com that lists and maps hotspots in the city. Wifi-Paris.com does not resolve.
The organization appears to want the domain name Parvi.org because it is calling its wifi setup “Project Parvi”. Parvi.org appears to be a software developer’s wiki, and completely unrelated to Wifi and Paris.
Related posts:
- Paris Sues Paris.org Owner in French Court
- Paris’ War on U.S. Domain Owners Coming to a Head
- Paris Wins Parvi.org in Disturbing Domain Name Arbitration Decision
Tags: udrp
“Parvi.org appears to be a software developer’s wiki, and completely unrelated to Wifi and Paris.”
Dow do you say “Reverse Domain Name Hijacking”
in French?
Is “douche” a French word?
Paris Attacks Geo Domain Name Owners – http://tinyurl.com/yb86zkx
Ville de Paris should lose each UDRP filed.
This will be a perfect test case on the integrity of the UDRP process & the judgement of the panelist(s).
Guys we should expect more of this unfortunately.
And before that bites, must also watch out for Google place pages, which surely will get indexed-
http://gesterling.wordpress.com/2009/09/27/another-look-at-place-pages/
Andrew,
Take a walk through the arguments here:
U.S. District Court
United States District Court for the Southern
CIVIL DOCKET FOR CASE #: 1:06-cv-06465-WHP
NJ Domains LLC v. Ville De Paris
Ville de Paris lied their butts off.
Joy. 3 years of lawyers threatening to sue me over it, and now that they know they can’t win in any court, they using UDRP.
@ John – Nice find. I just wrote about the Paris.com lawsuit, which I hadn’t heard about before. I didn’t go through all of the documents, but it’s pretty ugly.
@ Jeff – good luck. Look forward to reading what Paris has to say.
[...] recently, it filed for domain name arbitration under UDRP against owners of several domain names, including WifiParis.com. The verdict on [...]