Intellectual Property Law

Virtualsex.com Awarded to Smut Firm in Domain Flap

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

A California pornography company claiming it coined the term "virtual sex" in 1994 lost its bid Tuesday to gain control of the virtualsex.com domain.

The World Intellectual Property Organization said Tuesday that Network Telephone Services of Woodland Hills, California, is the rightful owner of the domain. The WIPO concluded that Network Telephone Service's website offered all the appropriate merchandise to match its namesake, even if Digital Playground of Chatsworth, California, owns the trademark, Virtual Sex.

"Finally, the diverse offerings available on the website to which the domain name at issue resolves suggest that respondent is trading on the descriptiveness of the term 'virtual sex,'" the WIPO ruled Tuesday.

Pornography is among the top trafficked features on the internet ? and big money is at stake. That was illustrated with the protracted legal battle over the sex.com domain, which resulted in a $65 million court judgment against Stephen Michael Cohen. He was accused of illegally hijacking the domain from Gary Kremen in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court.

In Tuesday's dispute, Digital Playground, which has a 40 percent market share of the DVD adult video market, claimed Network Telephone Services purchased the domain in bad faith in 1995. Network Telephone Services ? whose virtualsex.com offers adult DVDs, strip club web-cam sites, sex chat rooms, adult dating services and adult toys ? claimed it did not know of the trademark and considered the "virtual sex" phrase to be a generic term.

The WIPO, however, agreed with Digital Playground that the domain was "confusingly similar" to the valid Virtual Sex trademark. That said, the WIPO ruled in favor of Network Telephone Services, saying it could keep the domain because it made no sense why Digital Playground brought the complaint in January ? about 14 years after Network Telephone Services purchased the domain.

See Also:

• Comcast Hijackers Say They Warned the Company First
• ISPs' Error Page Ads Let Hackers Hijack Entire Web, Researcher ...
• ICANN and IANA Sites Hacked, Redirected
• Murdoch Outfoxed Over Domain Name Dispute

Full post as published by Threat Level on March 24, 2009 (boomark / email).