Domain Name Dispute and Infringement

Domain Name Dispute and Infringement

According to Dumas (2012), trademark law prohibits the use of a similar name by two distinct companies to prevent consumer confusion. Ideally, a company chooses a name and mark closely related to the products and services they it is rendering to the market. Where a company establishes that another counterpart elsewhere is using its name, it can take a legal action against it. For instance in the case of Smart Corporation and Smart.com, the latter has the legal capacity to sue the former and stop it from using “sMART” as its domain name on the internet. However, Smart Corporation must be in position to show and prove the following three critical elements.

First, Smart Corporation must prove that it had the initial trademark rights. It can do this by showing the trademark registration or by the use of common law. By common law, it means that the company had already used the name in commerce before it was registered. Secondly, Smart Corporation must prove the point that the name that the infringement of its name is in bad faith. In this case, it has to gather sufficient evidence that implicates Smart.com for malicious intent in the use of the name. For instance, if the original registrant has evidence that shows the accused as having tried to sell the name for profit purposes, the second registrant might be stripped off the rights to use the name. Another concrete evidence, as found by Miller and Jentz, (2013) is if proved beyond doubt that second registrant has a multiple of domain names that are confusingly similar to others elsewhere.

The final element is if the name is very similar to the point of confusing consumers. This is done by the comparison of the names involved in the dispute. In this case, Smart Corporation will have an easy time proving that the extent of the similarity in the names of the two companies will confuse their clients. If Smart Corporation can establish all the mentioned elements, then it should be...