I am not particularly a fan of legal articles on domain names and court decisions which they may be, and much prefers to leave the floor to qualified professionals. In addition, most articles published in a press become semi-General are used to keep my eyes to the fire of fear of cybersquatting and to encourage businesses to stay in the race for deposits defensive. Doing so subtly diverts public attention from the interests of domain name as an asset.

But strength to see go all the colors, the forms ... and we inquired. So I recently discovered an interesting post on domain-recht.de (in German) that I thought it might be here a summarized translation for those of you - that I think many - who do not speak the language of Goethe.

Court of Düsseldorf - a parking provider found not liable

Author: RA Daniel Dingeldey, 01/04/2008. Direct link to the source.

The second platform Sedo market has recognized the Court of Düsseldorf (Ruling of 28.11.2007, Az.: 2a O 176/07) that a claimant can not be held liable for infringement of trademark law that From the moment he had previously been formally notified of this possible violation.

This is not the first decision on the issue of parking domain names. The best known case is a ruling by the Court of Hamburg (ruling of 14/07/2004, Az. 5 U 160/03) on the concept of liability of the supplier park.

The facts behind the decision of the court in Düsseldorf: by letter of 29/05/2007, the defendant serves notice to the applicant (Company Sedo GmbH) to recognize that it has infringed his rights in the framework of the implementation of parking and the sale of a domain name lambda, and asked to bear the administrative costs relating to the proceedings. By letter dated 06/06/2007, the applicant states that she refuses to admit the facts alleged against him, on two grounds. On the one hand, society Sedo GmbH was initially unaware of the presence of the domain name in question in its database before the formal notice had been addressed. On the other hand, society Sedo GmbH has removed the disputed domain name in its database as it became aware of the facts at issue. Sedo GmbH The company even goes further and indicates that the complainant will have no choice but to initiate legal action in cases where it would not reconsider its claims within a specified time. The complainant does not run in that period, the company Sedo complaint filed before the Court of Düsseldorf.

There followed a debate on the legal question of whether it is for the applicant (Sedo GmbH) bonds prior audit concerning possible violations of the rights of third parties throughout the parking areas being via platform . The applicant contends that with seven million domain names parked by their owners through its platform, it can not reasonably ask him to proceed to each of these domain names to checks and marks an assessment of possible violations of rights, without calling into question the foundation of its business. And especially since the company Sedo GmbH said in its terms that the client is to conduct such audits. In this case, it is the owner who had set himself when setting parking his domain a keyword that generated automatically links advertising, regardless of the question to what extent These advertising links were competing with the activity of the defendant. Especially since even if the facts are not attributable to Sedo but the holder of the domain name in question, the company immediately Sedo GmbH - following receipt of the notice initial - removed the disputed domain name its database and inserted it into a blacklist to prevent future harm.

The Court of Düsseldorf confirms the applicant's argument. The latter did not itself violated the trademark of the defendant (Article 14, paragraph 2, paragraph 2 of the German Trademark Law) to the extent that it did not hold the field. It is limited to free a platform on which the domain owner has chosen to offer it for sale. In this regard, it is not required to carry out checks on the parked domain name in it, nor to examine their contents. Even if this is the case, the applicant should employ experts in trademark law responsible for making all kinds of investigations (trademark research, classes relevant to each of her study of advertising content associated with landing pages etc.). And it continuously for the 7 million domain names listed in its database. This is not reasonably foreseeable, the court said. In addition, the applicant has, irrespective of whether the client has identified himself or not the keyword associated with the domain name and automatically generates ad links, no influence on the content of advertising links in question.

When y'en more, still y'en:

• The domain kredit.de sold for a record sum of almost 900 000
• Computer Domain Manager to fill
• The parking areas in paperback
• Domain names auto.fr voitures.fr and sold for a total of 150 000 on Sedo
• The proliferation of TLDs