Trademark Law

What's in a name? Cybersquatting case has an answer

It's not often that a domain-name holder accused of cybersquatting actually prevails in a dispute with the party that filed the complaint. It's rarer still for that entity to then win a counterclaim of attempted reverse domain-name hijacking.

But that's just what happened to Indigo Networks, a Nassau, Bahamas-based telecommunications company that last November found itself hit with a complaint alleging that it had no legitimate interests or rights to the Onephone.com domain name it owned.

The complaint, filed by OnePhone Holding AB, a Stockholm-based telecommunications investment company, went to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The Geneva-based United Nations agency is one of four ICANN-approved domain-name dispute-resolution service providers.

OnePhone asked WIPO to have the Onephone.com domain name transferred because it was the rightful owner of a European registration under the name "ONEPHONE." The Swedish company also claimed that it had registrations or pending registrations of the name in several other countries -- though not in the Bahamas.