Domain names containing city names are illegal

Court in Germany just ruled!

[globay]

[heise.de...]

Short summary for those, who don't speak German:

The user of the domain divingschool-cityname.de was sued by a competitor because his domain name suggests, that he is the biggest or most important diving school in the city. The judges agreed, and a new series of court cases is expected.

[mack]

Thats a pretty interesting find.
Makes me wonder if this will be extended to country names as well as city names. The implications are huge if it does.

Does that mean I can sue my competetor who uses the domain uk[topic].co.uk

Dont think I would go that far but these rullings tend to set the ball rolling.

This might have effects for community sites that are not controlled by local government. townname.org for example might end up being sued by soneone else wishing to running another community site for the same.

Will loook fowards to hearing how this one works out.

Mack.

[heini]

Ridiculous. The reasoning is out of this world. According to this decision a domain name like best-divingschool-of-all-diving-schools.com would be legitimate, while divingschool-entenhausen.com would not be. With the argument being the latter would give the impression the diving shool was the largest in Entenhausen.
It's going to the next instance.

[gsx]

It's interesting that you bring up the uk[domain].co.uk variety.

In the UK you have to register to trade using certain words. Some include: British, England, English, Scotland, Scottish, Wales, Welsh, Ireland, Irish, European, Great Britain, United Kingdom, International and National.

Funny but UK and GB are not in the list and are exempt.

But a bigger list is at company-services.co.uk/sensitiv.html

[trillianjedi]

That is utterly ridiculous.

At what Court level was this decided at? Has an appeal been lodged?

Such a decision with such far-reaching consequences (including possibly company names) is very likely to end up at the European Court. I just can't for one moment see them following that decision.

Gut feeling - it will be overturned by a higher Court.

TJ

[Lisa]

absolutely a bad call. That judge should be over turned. Such a ruling would never stand in the US. Good thing they are only talking about .DE domains. Even if the ruling stands for a while, I don't see judges in other countries following.