Blackberry maker RIM wins domain dispute against Indian firm

Research In Motion, the maker of popular Blackberry smart phones, has clinched victory in an internet domain name dispute against an Indian firm at the World Intellectual Property Right Organisation (WIPO).      

The Canadian phone maker had challenged the registration of three domain names — blackbberry.Com, blckberry.Com, and bllackberry.Com — by the MumbaiDomains, a Mumbai-based firm, at the WIPO, stating they were similar to its trademark Blackberry, and could be confused with it.      

"Save for the addition/deletion of a single letter, the disputed domain names are visually and phonetically identical to the famous blackberry trademark, which also supports a finding of confusion," RIM had contended before the WIPO.      

The Geneva-based WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center has ordered the transfer of all three domain names used by Mumbai-based firm to Research In Motion (RIM).     

All the three disputed domain names are registered with eNom by MumbaiDomains.

RIM had alleged that the "disputed domain names are nearly identical to the famous blackberry trademark", and further the contended names are being used to attract internet users  to the websites by creating confusion.      

RIM is the proprietor of over 1,500 trademark registrations and applications worldwide containing, or comprising, the word "blackberry" and is one of the leading designers and manufacturers of innovative wireless solutions.      

The Blackberry smart phone is available on over 300 networks in more than 100 countries.      

According to the information available with WIPO, RIM had filed the complaint against the Indian firm on March 10 this year, although the domain names were registered in 2004 on two dates -- May 6 and August 28.      

The complaints were decided under Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) on May 5 after MumbaiDomains failed to fulfil the requirements of the notice sent to them by the Geneva-based arbitration tribunal.