Elephant.co.uk is a brand of Admiral Insurance Services, fronted
at the web site by a cartoon character called Trunkie. The brand
makes millions from selling cheap car insurance over the web. But
the owner of elephant.com, Adam Dicker from Ontario, told an
arbitration panel that he had never heard of the British
business.
This wasn't Admiral's first attempt to net elephant.com. Last
February, Admiral tried to buy it from then owner Bradford
Oberwager, offering him $18,000.
But Oberwager told Admiral that he was already in the process of
selling it to Dicker, for the sum of $22,500. He suggested that if
Admiral was prepared to up its offer to $32,000, he would ask
Dicker if he would walk away in return for some cash. Admiral
agreed, but Dicker refused the offer and took control of the
name.
Admiral contacted Dicker direct, offering to buy the name.
Dicker, a web developer who controls many web sites for himself and
his clients, said the name was not for sale. Then, after a second
request, he said: “The domain is not for sale for less than 1
million dollars. 3 offers are currently pending”.
He put lots of information about elephants on his web site and
signed up to Google AdSense to get money-making ads on his site.
Such ads are placed on behalf of Google's advertisers. They are
placed automatically by Google, the choice of ad being paired with
the subject matter of the hosting web site.
On the basis that some of these ads linked to other insurance
companies, Admiral filed a cybersquatting complaint with the World
Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), arguing that Dicker had
no right to the name and was using it in bad faith.
Dicker responded that he had been experimenting with the content
of his site at the time that Admiral looked at it, rotating through
subjects as diverse as jewellery and photography, music downloads
and insurance, and generating different adverts in respect of the
changing content.
He said that until he received the complaint he had not been
aware of any company using the word elephant as a brand of
insurance. His previous communications with Oberwager and Admiral
had made no mention of the term. He said that as soon as he knew of
the possible infringement he had removed the insurance ads and
replaced his original content.
The site, he argued, was therefore being operated in good
faith.
Admiral disagreed, producing evidence showing that the site was
still generating insurance adverts. On the elephant.com homepage at
the time of writing, Google AdSense displays one advert for
insurexyz.com, headed "WWF Save the Big Cat" and linking to a page
on insurexyz.com's site that promotes pet insurance. Dicker pointed
out that he has no control over the ads that Google AdSense
displays on his site.
He also argued that Adsense sometimes generates different
adverts for the same web page, depending on the internet protocol
(IP) address of the person viewing the page, so that UK viewers see
different adverts to those from Canada. Dicker had had no idea
insurance adverts were being shown in the UK, he said.
Dicker reasoned that if AdSense is linking to competitors of
Admiral, that is a matter for Admiral to raise with Google, not
him.
The three-man WIPO panel agreed, finding that Admiral had not
proved bad faith on the part of Adam Dicker. The panel refused to
transfer the domain.
