Mr Oxford-University loses domain name to Oxford University

This is the second occasion that the University has been awarded a domain name from the same person. In May 2000, the man, who also uses the names “Lord Oxford”, “Mr Oxford”, “Sir Oxford University”, “Domain Man”, and “Dr Seagle”, was ordered by WIPO to hand over the domain name oxford-university.com. On that occasion, the WIPO tribunal had stated that there was no proof that he was in fact known as “Oxford University”.

The WIPO arbitrator said that the man was using the address to deliberately tarnish the 800 year old trade mark of Oxford University and that he had no legitimate interest in the domain name.

The case is similar to one involving a UK man who registered wembleystadium.net. He claimed that he had been commonly known as wembleystadium.net for a number of years on account of his “height and large skeletal frame”. The domain name was transferred by a WIPO tribunal to Wembley National Stadium Limited.

In another recent WIPO decision, AOL lost its battle for the domain name nudescape.com from Canadian company Media Dial which operates the domain name as a porn site.

AOL argued that the domain name was confusingly similar to its Netscape trade mark, and that confusion was made even more likely by the fact that the Nudescape.com site contained a banner which read “Nudescape.com – The Site of Choice for AOL Users”.

WIPO stated in its ruling that “scape” and “nude” were common words in the English language, and that AOL’s Netscape trademark did not prevent others using these words as part of their domain names.