Squatters Lose .eu based on technicality

The domain frankfurt.eu like many others, was assigned to Traffic Web Holding B.V. a company registered in the Netherlands. Interestingly the same company registered:

Short before the start of the sunrise period, on 30 November 2005, Traffic Web Holding B.V. filed in total 822 trademark applications with the Benelux Trademark office

So how can a private company justify that number of trademarks and domain applications?

Short answer – they can’t and the Eurid ADR proceedings have decided in favour of the city of Frankfurt, that, unsurprisingly, had also applied for the domain.

The problem, however, is that the ADR ruling while mentioning the number of trademarks seems to ignore the obvious bad faith element of the registration.
The trademark in question was “FRANKF & URT”, so they argue that the only possible domains on which a prior right could be claimed would be hyphenated versions or other replacements of the ampersand ie. that the shorter version is not acceptable.

You can read the full decision on the ADR site

By Michele Neylon

Michele is founder and managing director of Irish domain registrar and hosting company Blacknight. Michele has been deeply involved in domain and internet policy discussions for more than a decade. He also co-hosts the Technology.ie podcast.

2 comments

  1. WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ” at line 1]
    SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT ID) FROM

  2. That error was due to me running a beta version of WordPress. It should be gone
    now, as I’ve upgraded to the latest stable

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