The City Council of Brisbane, Australia has lost a case brought
before the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in
Geneva to claim the domain name BrisbaneCity.com from its current
owner who owns numerous Australian domain names.
Brisbane City Council argued that it had the exclusive right to
the name because it owned registered trade marks that include the
words Brisbane City. Warren Bolton, who lives near Brisbane and
describes his business as a local government consultancy,
registered the domain name and had offered it for auction with an
asking price of US$25,000.
Warren Bolton observed that the Council’s trade marks only
qualified for registration as trade marks by their inclusion of
other words in support of the term Brisbane City. He argued that he
intends to use the domain name as a portal to service the city.
The panellist in the case looked to previous cases over
geographical domain names, including Barcelona.com and
PortOfHelsinki.com. He took the view that Brisbane City is not a
trade mark, but rather a descriptive term. After this finding, it
was not necessary for the panellist to consider whether Warren
Bolton had a legitimate interest in the name and whether or not he
had registered and used the name in good faith.
