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Less
than a week
after
Rick Schwartz scored an important
UDRP win against a Brazilian
company that tried to hijack one of his
domains, comes word from Ari
Goldberger's law fim, ESQwire.com,
of a double-pronged victory for
one of their clients, Didier Madiba
of Wilmington, Delaware based
Fenicius LLC, over Mediaset S.P.A.,
a company owned by Italian media magnate
and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
This
fight over the domain MediaSet.com
had more twists and turns than an Agatha
Christie novel. Mediaset S.P.A. was a
previous owner of the domain after
successfully taking it away from the
prior owner through an earlier UDRP
action. However, MediaSet, in a stranger
than fiction oversight, lost the
domain when they failed to renew
it and let it expire! |
Ari
Goldberger, ESQWire.com |
That's
where Madiba entered the picture. He picked up
the domain on the drop with plans to develop it
(plans that were waylaid when Madiba had to
switch his focus to a more important battle
after he was diagnosed with cancer). Shortly after
that, Mediaset S.P.A. popped up again and filed another
UDRP - this time against Madiba.
Madiba turned to one of the domain industry's
top attorneys in Goldberger (founder of
ESQwire.com) and this time, thanks to a
well-reasoned response from Goldberger, Mediaset
S.P.A. lost the
decision (.pdf file), allowing
Madiba to keep the domain.
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Image
from Bigstock |
MediaSet
S.P.A. did not let the matter drop there
- instead they moved the ball to their home
court - filing a lawsuit
against Madiba at the Court of Rome
in Italy. ESQwire.com worked with
an Italian IP Counsel, Nicoletta Colombo, to defend Madiba
and today they announced another
victory. While the Italian
judges understandably ruled that
Mediaset S.P.A.’s Italian trademark
entitled them to protection in Italy
it did not give them the right to
Madiba's domain. They ruled that he
could keep MediaSet.com and is free
to use the domain outside of Italy.
Speaking
for ESQWire.com, Jason Schaeffer
said, "Naturally, we are quite
pleased by this decision and believe
this is a great victory for domain
owners. The Italian Court’s
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recognition
of the domain owner’s rights is
encouraging and provides further support
for the UDRP and a balanced approach to
Trademark law." After years
of seeing domain owner's rights
repeatedly trampled on, recent decisions
have been a most welcome turn of
events - a trend we hope will
continue in the future. |
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