Wed Jun 28, 5:32 PM ET
GENEVA - A U.N. agency has ruled that ownership of the lassie.com domain name must be handed to New York-based Classic Media Inc., the company that owns rights to the popular TV series Lassie about an adventurous collie.
Classic Media filed a complaint to the World Intellectual Property Organization over the use of the star dog's name in an Internet address registered by Warren R. Royal of Cumming, Ga., the agency said Wednesday.
"In the United States, 'Lassie' is one of the most widely known dogs in film, television and print," a WIPO panel of arbitrators said in a ruling dated June 19. "She has been an American icon since the story of a lost collie finding her way home first appeared in 1938."
The panel, which started in 1999, allows those who believe they have the right to a domain to gain control of it without having to fight a costly legal battle or pay large sums of money.
The Lassie ruling follows a number of high profile cases in which so-called "cybersquatters" register domain names for a small fee in order to sell them back to companies and individuals with a claim to the name.
The arbitrators said Royal had acted in "bad faith" by registering and "passively holding" the address, even though it was inactive for the past four years. From 1999 to 2002 the site was used by Royal as his unofficial Lassie fan-site, they said.
Royal told the panel that he shut down the site "due to economic conditions" in 2002 and never revived it.
The panel ordered the domain name transferred to Classic Media, which owns 17 Lassie trademark registrations. |
(Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060628/ap_on_hi_te/lassie_domain) |