Ruby Life, the Canada-based parent company to Ashley Madison, has recovered a domain name which was infringing on the infidelity brand’s intellectual property.
An arbitration and mediation panel at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) ruled that the owner of ‘ashlaymadison.com’ “lacked any legitimate or noncommercial legal rights or interests over the trademark,” according to IPPro Magazine. The address contains a deliberate misspelling of ‘Ashley’.
The domain had been registered by an anonymous individual based in the Bahamas via provider BS Corp.
Official Harrie Samaras ordered that the digital property be transferred to Ruby Life, declaring its initial purchase to be a form of “typo-piracy”.
French dating site Gaymec recovered a domain in a similar controversy earlier this year, with WIPO ruling that ‘gaymec.info’ was being used in bad faith to direct traffic to competitor site.
The domain http://pof.pw/ still sends users to a fake Plenty Of Fish website, despite WIPO siding with the Match Group brand after it filed a complaint in 2017.
This month, experts at the International Law Office weighed in on an IP dispute between LinkedIn and the causal sex site KinkedIn, noting how the lower potential for consumer confusion played in KinkedIn’s favour.
The service damaged its own position by conceding that LinkedIn was a widely-recognised brand, however.
Read more here.