Region: Europe

France has had its first conflict involving a domain name that was not registered as a trademark, nor used for the identification of a person, product or service. The outcome, giving the plaintiff a "right of occupation" in the name, has been much criticized.

25 October 2001

In the first Italian case to address the issue, the use of a metatag that reproduces a competitor's trademark has been deemed an act of unfair competition. As a result, courts are free to grant interlocutory injunctions to protect against trademark infringement.

22 October 2001

The Commercial Court of Aargau has decided an important case concerning the legality of metatags. The use of a registered trademark as a metatag is generally permitted provided that the website owner does not create the impression that its business is connected to the trademark owner.

19 October 2001

Until recently, Italian courts have used trademark and unfair competition laws to resolve domain name disputes. However, a recent appeal decision has left the application of these laws to cybersquatting cases in doubt. As a result, the Senate is proposing specific legislation, which has not been well received.

19 October 2001

For the first time, the Court of Appeal has set out the requirements for registration of a trademark based on use of the mark on the Internet. There must be some active promotion of the website to the UK public.

18 October 2001

A recently issued government order makes a number of changes to the system of assigning Spanish domain names, including relaxed rules on special domain name registrations and registrations by foreign companies.

16 October 2001

A recently granted injunction is the first decision of a Czech court concerning a domain name dispute. While the court did not consider whether a domain name registration breaches trademark rights, it did state that trademarks take precedence over domain names.

16 October 2001

The relationship between trademark protection and domain names under the country code top-level domain '.no' has to some extent been clarified by a number of recent court decisions concerning the marks CARLSBERG, SONY and KVAERNER.

15 October 2001

For the first time, a Greek court has held that the legitimate owner of a trademark may not be entitled to register a domain name containing that mark. The result hinges on whether there is a competitive relationship between the disputing parties.

11 September 2001

Red.es, the administrator of the country's top-level domain, has beencriticized by consumer and internet users' associations for not applying uniformcriteria to the allocation of generic domain names.

17 July 2001