EasyJet loses ground in cyberspace

GENEVA -- Britain's no-frills budget airline EasyJet has lost a cybersquatting case for the rights of the domain name www.easy-jet.com to a Briton selling refills for printer cartridges, U.N. arbitrators have said.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which runs an arbitration system to evict cybersquatters or net users who register famous names in the hope of making quick profits, said Easyjet had failed to prove that the holder of the site was using it in bad faith or had no legitimate interest in it.

Easyjet is depicted by its Greek Cypriot owner Stelios Haji-Ioannou as an underdog fighting big business, but in this case it has ended up being cast as the neighborhood bully.

Easyjet filed the WIPO complaint in May, alleging cybersquatting by Tim Holt of Warrington, Cheshire in Britain, who had been first to register the site for his business providing refills for Ink Jet printer cartridges.

Printer cartridge firm beats airline to Web name

A WIPO panel said that although the Internet address was confusingly similar to Easyjet's trademark, it concluded that Holt was in a different kind of business to Easyjet's.

It said it had no reason to doubt Holt's version of the facts, noting his other domain names appeared to be legitimate.

"There is nothing to suggest that the domain name was registered with any intention to disrupt the business of Easyjet," the WIPO panel declared.

As domain names have become more valuable with the explosion of the Internet, a market has emerged for opportunists to grab net addresses simply by being there first in the current system which is largely first-come, first-served.

The fast-track arbitration system of WIPO, the specialized Geneva-based U.N. copyright and intellectual property agency, allows firms and individuals to avoid costly lawsuits in cases when mischief is a possible motive or large sums of money are at stake.

WIPO has received more than 1,000 cases related to disputed domain names since its arbitration system began last year.

Copyright 2000 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

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