Scripps learns that DIY, like the word Food, is generic.
Scripps Networks has lost its second legal rights objection against a top level domain name application, this time losing .diy.
It previously lost an objection for .food.
Scripps, which owns home improvement media company DIY Network, filed the complaint against Google. Scripps and Google are the only two applicants for the domain name.
Panelist Scott Blackmer determined that the term “DIY” is generic, standing for do-it-yourself.
In coming to that conclusion, he pointed to a 2002 UDRP ruling on the domain name diy.biz.
The Panel notes that the issue of the generic quality of the acronym “DIY” has arisen previously in the context of a dispute concerning the domain name diy.biz. In 2002, a UDRP panel dismissed the complaint brought by a United Kingdom company claiming rights in the unregistered mark DIY, remarking, “it is in practice impossible to run a business in do-it-yourself products without using the letters DIY in a wholly generic, descriptive way…
The Panel is inclined to find similarly that a new gTLD intended for use by DIY manufacturers, retailers, and enthusiasts may appropriately, even necessarily, use the generic acronym for the very products and activities in which they are interested.
Google pointed out that Scripps doesn’t even own the major second level DIY domain names including diy.com, diy.net, and diy.org. Instead, it uses diynetwork.com.
DIY.com is owned by a home improvement store.
Scripps will now have to battle Google for the .diy top level domain name on a more level playing field: an auction.
Jan McMahan says
Scrips network is so hateful !!! Letting Paula Deen go, scrips is headquartered in Knoxville,Tenn…….It should know words in the south were very different. 30 years ago !!!!!!