Media giant loses case against small town real estate agent.
Financial media company Bloomberg Finance has lost a domain name dispute with a small town real estate agent over the domain BloombergRealty.com.
Bloomberg filed a case with National Arbitration Forum, arguing that the domain name BloombergRealty.com violated the media company’s trademark. The domain’s owner is Nancy Shulman, a real estate agent whose married surname was Bloomberg.
Bloomberg Finance failed on all three elements it must prove under the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy. The case was doomed right off the bat when the arbitrator found that BloombergRealty.com was not confusingly similar to the mark Bloomberg.
While finding that the domain wasn’t confusingly similar, Arbitrator Nelson A. Diaz wrote:
The Panel concludes that Complainant has not satisfied Policy 4(a)(i) because the disputed domain name is not confusingly similar to the mark; therefore, the Panel declines to analyze the other two elements of the Policy.
But he then went on to analyze the other two elements of the policy, in which he also found in favor of Shulman. After all, her former last name and kids’ names are Bloomberg, establishing some rights to the name. She also has operated a web site at the domain name to promote her real estate business.
Domain Investor says
Andrew,
You must have been rushing to post this.
The usual link to the udrp is not included.
🙂
Andrew Allemann says
@ Domain Investor – 4:38 on a Friday and I’m rushing to write it? Huh, that’s strange 🙂
Thanks for noticing; I added the link. If you read the decision, you’ll be utterly confused about what each side is arguing. It seems like the panelist cut and pasted from a previous decision or something.
jorge says
>> failed on all three elements
0 out of 3 ain’t bad. haha
M. Menius says
This case is comical in the degree of ignorance shown by Bloomberg Finance. But all jokes aside, they’re action was more like thievery than protecting their brand. Reminds me of the Spike Lee case in which he tried to stop SpikeTV from using the world “Spike”.
Mike Maddaloni - @thehotiron says
If you look at bloombergrealty.com and read the owner’s bio, interestingly one of her son’s names is Michael.
mp/m
Andrew Allemann says
I suspect that Bloomberg didn’t realize the owner of the firm used to have the last name Bloomberg. But once it filed the case and learned that, it could have withdrawn it.
M. Menius says
@Andrew – “I suspect that Bloomberg didn’t realize the owner of the firm used to have the last name Bloomberg”
If the domain name in question had been ‘BloombergFinance’ or ‘BloombergMedia’, then their action would have been understandable, imo.
But unrelated industries (or “Business classifications”) are, and should be, exempt from threats. Ex. Bloomberg’s Restaurant, Bloomberg Office Supply, Bloomberg Oil, etc.
It’s this over-reaching that’s so abusive to legitmate registrants. And seems to have been the case with the lady’s real estate company.