British Queen Loses Out On New Zealand's Cyber Name

from the cybersquatting-countries dept

Apparently, New Zealand made a big mistake. They forgot to register their own country name as a trademark, and thus, they have no right to the domain NewZealand.com. This case is made even more interesting by the fact that it was brought by the Queen of England, who is still, technically, the head of state of New Zealand. NewZealand.com is owned by an American company who offers tourist info. It just goes to show how corporate-focused the domain name arbitration process is. If you're a company, you're going to win. It used to be over individuals, but now it seems to be over countries as well. Let this be a lesson to all those countries that have failed to properly protect the intellectual property that is their own name...
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  • identicon
    gary, 20 Dec 2002 @ 7:35pm

    dot-com not dot-gov

    I think it's important that they are fighting over NewZealnad.com, not NewZealand.gov

    Maybe the queen doesn't know the difference. I wonder if she even knows about the dispute. Just a Yank speaking.

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