David & Goliath: game.co.uk vs. GAME Group, PLC

srashdotu writes "The Register reports on a recent Nominet UK domain dispute, which ruled against the current owner of the "game.co.uk" domain in favour of the retail chain GAME Group plc. According to the article, 'The battle for Game.co.uk is unusual and highly significant for two reasons. Firstly, it concerns a generic and common word in the English dictionary -- "game." And secondly, Mr Sumpter [the registrant] was using the domain to run a video-game-selling business.' What makes this dispute different is the generic nature of the domain. 'both Nominet's DRS system and the ICANN UDRP approach have tended to recognise that no one has greater rights over generic names, names with a common meaning, than anyone else, so the owner is entitled to keep the domain. Equally, few cases have seen company pitched against company since they tend to see the sense in steering clear of each others' trademarks,' reads the article. Nevertheless, Nominet found against Mr Sumpter's right to the use the name 'game' (based in-part on Google search results!) and stepped firmly in to trademark territory to make the decision. Mr Sumpter has lodged an appeal, but if the ruling is upheld it could set a precedent that could see many legitimate owners of generic domains facing the threat of losing their livelihoods at the hands of corporate bullies."

Comments

Stupid Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Proving once again that America is a playground for massive corporations, and has no real respects for the rights of the little guy the way we do here in Europe. What you colonials really need to do is learn to hold your government accountable for...

Oh, wait...

Bugger.

Never mind.

Re:Fuck Corporate Bullying!

[JimmehAH]

That's how it looks now.
I had a quick look at the archived site and it looks like it was a perfectly legitimate online store.

If you RTFA

[madaxe42]

You'll actually see what has happened here - over the course of some 4 years, the guy who owned game.co.uk (and had done so since 1995) was in correspondence with GAME, who approached him wishing to buy the domain. He then kept on agreeing on a sale price, and then upping his price, until he started demanind in excess of £1,000,000 for the domain, and then came up with some spiel about GAME being in competition with a fictitious company for the domain. He should have accepted their offer of £1,000,000 and ran - his perjury has cost him all.

Re:If you RTFA

[kenthorvath]

If you RTFA...

No, even more important would be for slashdot et al. to stop using slanderous sensationalism to incite its readers. The world would be a much better place if we all kept a cool head about things and approached dillemmas cooly and rationally.

Perhaps they should teach a temperment class in school...

Re:If you RTFA

[pmc]

All true. The kicker was that orignally he was using the game.co.uk domain in an area of business that did not overlap with the GAME group's area of business, so there was no trademark problems.

After the tooing and froing over the price he then set up game.co.uk so that there was trademark confusion - basically he started selling games from the website. Now there was confusion over the trademark.

He was, in my opinion, dinged reasonable for acting in bad faith. If he did not move the game.co.uk website into the area of business of GAME I don't think he would have had any problems.

Re:If you RTFA

[MarkGriz]

Maybe so, but FTFA

1. Procedural Background:
The Complaint was lodged with Nominet on 8 November 2004....

3. The Facts:

1. The Complainant is a company engaged in the retail sale of computer software and hardware including computer and video games through high street outlets under the mark and style GAME and online from the domain name game.net. It, and its predecessor in title Game Plc have been in business under the mark GAME since 1990.

From 1990 to 2004 is 14 years. Did these guys *just now* hear about "the internets"

Sex dot com

[boingyzain]

Wow, next thing you know, they'll be fighting over sex.com. Oh, wait...

Re:Typical

[Snowmit]

The legal system is one of the main reasons why I hardly ever leave my bedroom...in my mind having virtually anything to do with offline society these days is suicidal.

LOL!!!11!! So true! I liek 2 spend my time on teh bastion of sanity, reasoned discussion, friendly compassion and OFMG respectful appreciation that is teh Intarnet!11!!!1!one!!1111

RTFA Slashdotters

[flibuste]

I have read the ENTIRE thing.

I started reading slashdot comments.

Funnily enough the second doesn't match what the article says. Or maybe it's usual

The court judgement says that basically the guy had all the rights to register game.co.uk, the use he made of it consisted an abusive use of a domain name, since he started a game reselling business after being informed of GAME's plans to rebrand and go on the web.

And for the english-challenged: GAME did NOT offer 1 million pounds to buy the name. The guy did and they refused the offer

As much as I'd like it be the other way around, the guy did a bad attempt at taking advantage of an honest issue brought by GAME. They offered him a lot of cash and all he did he start a business to fool people in thinking it was related to GAME somehow. I hate big corporations against Davids, but this time, Goliath is probably right.

Re:when being slashdotted..

[Blue Ray]

Here's a link to the archive.org snapshot

So he's used a domain which he's owned for ages to sell games and make some money. Big deal. The logo's different and couldn't be confused in a hundred years. If Game Group wanted it so bad theyshould have offered him a reasonable amount, instead the offers seem pretty pathetic - less than a year of game.co.uk's profit!

TBH, the 1,000,000 figure suggested to Game group is probably a bit low, given 60,000 annual profit and taking into account how much further profit a big outfit like Game Group would make on the same unit sales with their massive margins. They'd be looking at well over 100 grand. If a company's values at 10x annual profit, that's straight past a million.

Next they'll be suing anyone selling games that have the word game anywhere in there name - gamestation jumps to mind, but they're woned by blockbuster now. I doubt Game Group would have the bottle to fight against another heavyweight... :)