Money Down the Drain: Porsche.me

Man who shelled out big bucks in .me auction kicking himself now.

Pity poor Georg Kohler of Brazil.

In August I wrote regarding how he snapped up car firm names in the .me launch auctions. He even paid $90,025 for Toyota.me. Apparently he hadn’t gotten the memo from ten years ago regarding the dangers of owning trademarked domain names.

In a recent World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) decision, he lost Porsche.me to the car firm. Could his $90,000 investment in Toyota.me be too far behind?

On both Porsche.me and Toyota.me, Kohler has landing pages that say the domain will be used for cars but in a non-commercial manner:

Welcome to our future non comercial [sic] Porsche Fan Club Site…Disclaimer: www.porsche.me is not owned by, sponsored by, authorized by, sanctioned by Porsche AG

The panel must not have bought it, or decided it didn’t care that it was non-commercial. Unfortunately WIPO hasn’t posted the decision online yet so we can’t read its rational. [update: the decision is now posted. The panel found that a) the fact that the domain is just the trademark – not trademarkfans.me or something like that – creates instant confusion and b) he offered to sell the domain to Porsche upon receiving a cease and desist letter.]

Kohler isn’t the only one to lose his .me domain names.

ExxonMobil recently picked up ExxonMobil.me from a Tampa, Florida man. Confederation Nationale du Credit Mutuel picked up CreditMutuel.me. It won’t be long ahead of other trademarks get picked up in arbitration.