McDonalds buys Whataburger.com and ...

[fischermx]

Imagine McDonalds buys Whataburger.com and redirects their domain to McDonalds.com.
For this, suppose WhataBuger's owner, never bought their domain, it just happens they never thought about putting a website about their big hamburgers.
On day McDonalds CIO woke up with the idea, took the Whataburger.com domain and starting to redirect the traffic of this site from people looking for their nearest whataburger branch. One year later, whataburger's owner being an ignorant gets deliciousburgers.com and put their website there.
Five year later, what a burger is aware that a domain taken this wait might be able to be takeng by filing a dispute, so Whataburger files a WIPO.
Is it a winning case ?

(I friend of mine have a case similar to this, I just changed the names of the companies to make a bigger illustration).

Please, share your opinions. ANY opinions.

 

[March2005]

yes, winnable if the company name is unique/specific/well known and not something like a dictionary word

 

[fischermx]

This is my friend's case:
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2006/d2006-0390.html

Sadly, it is in spanish. Badly more, I speak spanish and I don't understand why they lost the case !

Continuing with the same example, it seems that "McDonalds" somehow made it to get a trademark on the name "whataburger" in the section "food", near to the same date that whataburger go their own trademark on the section "hamburgers".
And it seems based on that stupid trademark on "food" that the domain could not be taken from the squatters.

 

[DNjet]

And further more, the "whataburger" hamburger chain could be infringing on that trademark and have to change their name.