A US federal judge has ruled against Chatam International, a company producing a raspberry liqueur under the trade mark “Chambord”, in a dispute over the rights to the domain name chambord.com. The name was registered by Bodum, which markets coffee products under the trade marks “Cafitiere Chambord” and “Café Chambord Coffee”.

Although the companies sell their products under similar trade marks, they are not in direct competition since they do not trade in the same food related products and the marks attach to specified products only. The judge accepted that a user accessing the web site chambord.com expecting to find information about the liqueur may initially be confused.

However, he concluded that this was not sufficient reason to order the transfer of the domain name, suggesting that internet users do not always expect their presumptions as to the content or source of a web site to be correct.

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