Internet

• Author: International Law Group

On May 17, 2001, the German High Court (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) issued two fundamental decisions on internet domain names.

The first decision concerns the domain name "www.ambiente.de." The organization for Frankfurt trade fairs, Messe Frankfurt AG, conducts a regular trade fair for table settings, kitchens and living space called "Ambiente." A private individual, however, had registered the German internet domain name "www.ambiente.de" and was unwilling to cancel it. Messe Frankfurt sued DENIC, the company that administers German internet domains ending in ".de", to have the domain name at issue registered in its name. The district court in Frankfurt a.M. agreed with Messe Frankfurt that DENIC should cancel the initial registration and award the domain name to Messe Frankfurt.

The State Supreme Court in Frankfurt reversed, and the German High Court affirms. In the BGH's view, DENIC merely registers and administers millions of internet domain names but has no duty to review every domain name registration to determine whether it infringes the legal rights of third parties. Even where DENIC is on notice of third party claims, DENIC ordinarily refers the claimant to the registered owner to resolve the dispute. In some cases, a court will have to decide who has a proper claim to a domain name. German law requires DENIC to unilaterally cancel a domain name registration only where the law violation is obvious. In this case, all that Messe Frankfurt came up with was a statement from the original registrant promising not to use the domain name anymore. Thus, the BGH holds, DENIC did not have conclusive proof that Messe Frankfurt had a proper claim to that domain name.

In the second case, the BGH reviews a dispute over the use of generic terms in an internet domain name. The German language commonly uses the word "Mitwohnzentrale" (office for joint living) to refer to service providers that find roommates to share apartments and houses. An association of 25 such service providers registered the domain name: "www.mitwohnzentrale.de." The website provided a listing of the member offices according to city. A competing association with 40 members challenged the domain name registration. It claimed that registrant was using a generic word misleadingly to attract users to its individual website although users would...