It is known for being the name of an airport, it isn't comparable to a suburb with hundreds of land owners. Very few people are likely to associate the term "perth airport" as being a suburb and clearly the use of the name was related to the airport. What else is it going to be about other than what the trademark relates to?
You can read the UDRP complaint, it only failed on one element, that is a close call. Personally I would not defend this name, I think the owner has a very real chance of losing a significant amount of money in court defending a name that is dicey.
Oh snoopy - I don't know whether you are just being deliberately argumentative or you just can't see anything positive regarding domains whether it's valuation, defending, developing, registration.
Remember this guy defended an WIPO/auDRP which are known to be heavily biased towards the complainant. The courts tend to be fairer so I'm sure he'll be OK.
Plus remember that to be 'sued', it's not the case that if you lose you have to pay an arbitrary whopping great fine to the other party. The onus is on the other party to demonstrate their loss.
In this case Perth Airport would have to show that they actually lost business through this guy using that domain and put a dollar figure on it for compensation. Even you would have to admit this would be a long bow to draw.
I wonder how dot.com in this area would be viewed, I've had www.goldcoastairport.com , www.sunshinecoastairport.com and www.herveybayairport.com ranking for years under the .com.au websites with no problems.
I always have a link to the actual website for the airport from my site.
Don
Hey Don - same deal really auDRP fundamentals are the same as WIPO. But just as in the case we're discussing, I'm sure if you were challenged you would defend it OK esp with the link to the official site. I'd add a clearer disclaimer though just to be safe.
The OKI Data principles:
The prevailing view is that a reseller of goods has a right to incorporate a manufacturer’s mark in an offering of goods and services when the record shows the following:
1. The respondent actually offers the goods and services at issue;
2. the respondent uses the site only to offer those goods;
3. the site accurately reveals the lack of affiliation with the trademark owner; and
4. the respondent is not trying to corner the market on all relevant domain names, thus depriving the trademark owner of own use of its mark in a domain name.
