The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court decision that transferred ownership of the domain name foradodge.com to Daimler-Chrysler, finding that the original registrant of the domain had a bad faith intent to profit from the mark, which was confusingly similar to Dodge’s advertised phone number 1-800-4-A-DODGE.

The case, Daimler-Chrysler v. The Net, Inc. Case No. 03-1950, 04a0368 p.06 (6th Cir. Oct 28, 2004), was on appeal from the defendant who challenged the holding of the lower court that 1) plaintiffs had established trademark rights in FORADODGE, and 2) that defendant had acted in bad faith in registering the domain name in the first place.

As to the first point, the defendant argued that the plaintiff merely used the mark 4-a-dodge as a phone number, and not as a trademark, contrasting it with marks such as 1-800-flowers, which is the actual business name. The Sixth Circuit disagreed, finding that the test is not merely whether the mark is used as a trademark, but whether consumers would believe that the 4ADODGE website, which incorporated the DODGE trademark , was related to or sponsored by Daimler-Chrysler. The Court dismissed slight differences in the spelling of the domain as immaterial.

The Court also rejected the defendant’s second claim that he had not registered the domain in bad faith. The defendant claimed that he was planning to use the website to help consumers circumvent or //dodge// certain realities of life, such as paying taxes and parking tickets. The Court didn’t buy it, finding that the defendant qualified for all but one of the nine-factor test for a showing of bad faith.

This entry was posted by Tsan Abrahamson on Thursday, December 9th, 2004 at 11:06 am and is filed under Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.