Tuesday 28 January 2014

Intentionally Misspelled Domain Violates Competition Law

BGH I ZR 164/12


The German Federal Court had to decide a case in which a company used a domain name for its website promoting health insurances, which was almost identical to another companies domain name for a general weather forecast website except of an intentional misspelling, in order to lead users who accidentally typed the domain name wrongly for the weather forecast site to the health insurance promoting site. For every user landing on the latter site the company would receive a fee. The Court held that such business conduct by the "misspelling" company is a violation of competition law affecting the pursuit of business by the company providing the weather forecast website, if the first company does not immediately inform the user who landed on its website that it is not the weather forecast site.

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