A domain it doesn’t even own: National Car Rental sues over National.com typo

Car rental firm demands typo of National.com, a domain it doesn’t even own.

Vanguard Trademark Holdings, which owns the National car rental brand, has filed a cybersquatting lawsuit (pdf) against the domain name Natiional.com.

The firm filed a UDRP against the domain name by now. It lost that case in June. On the same day it won a similar case for another typo, Nationnal.com.

Part of the reason it lost the Natiional.com case is since the panel ruled it’s OK to own a typo of a generic word.

But what I find most interesting is that the firm doesn’t even own National.com. It’s owned by National Semiconductor. So Vanguard is asking a court to hand over a typo of a domain it doesn’t even own!

I also get a kick out of the convoluted way Vanguard found links to car rentals on Natiional.com, basically saying that if you go a few pages into the directory-like parked page you can find links to car rental firms, counting National.

Vanguard states that Natiional.com, although protected with a whois privacy service, actually belongs to Kevin Ham’s Vertical Axis.