Based on a recent ruling by the WIPO in the case of Covance Inc et al vs. The Covance Campaign (WIPO Domain Name Decision: D2004-0206), which saw the latter, an anti-vivisection organisation, keep control of its domain name covancecampaign.com despite a complaint from multinational contract research company Covance Inc. The ruling by WIPO panellist Alistair Payne focused on the issue of whether the domain ‘covancecampaign’ was too neutral a phrase that it would cause some confusion to people who discovered it in a search engine.

By examining the issue carefully, Mr Payne conclude that the name did give rise to some confusion, but that the situation was balanced by measures that the Covance Campaign had taken in order to prevent some of that confusion.

The discussion provided by Mr Payne clearly highlighted the considerations which the WIPO use in order to reach their decision in matters such as these which are not clear cut, as opposed to rulings on the use of so-called ‘sucks’ websites where previous rulings have indicated that the use of the modifier ‘sucks’ does not lead to confusion.

The advice issued by freeB.E.A.G.L.E.S. draws on the lessons learnt from this important decision and from the approached used by The Covance Campaign to draw up a set of guidelines for groups incorporating a trademark word into a domain name they wish to use for campaigning purposes. The guide also contains a detailed description of how campaigns can fight attempts to seize domain names under WIPO and Nominet guidelines.

The guide can be downloaded for free from  http://www.freebeagles.org/articles/dn.html

Notes for editors

1. freeB.E.A.G.L.E.S. (British Environmental and Animal Groups Legal rESources) is a collective of activists and lawyers specialising in legal issues relating to campaign groups and political protestors. On their website at www.freebeagles.org they have variety of pamphlets and guides free for use by activists and campaigns. It is now the foremost website of it’s kind in the UK. They can be contacted at  info@freebeagles.org
2. The Covance Campaign is a Harrogate based group protesting against animal testing being carried out at Covance Laboratories Ltd, also of Harrogate. They can be reached at www.covancecampaign.org or by email at  info@covancecampaign.com
3. As similar case is that of neimancarass.com, an anti-fur site targeting large US shopping chain Neiman Marcus. Again the WIPO upheld the right of the activists to use the site, blocking Neiman Marcus’s attempt to seize ownership of it.