Allowed To Keep Crops (.com) — Watermelon Farmer
DigiMedia’s founder can keep growing crops.
Oh, the irony.
A World Intellectual Property Organization panel has ruled that DigiMedia.com, L.P., founded by watermelon farmer Scott Day, can keep the domain name Crops.com (pdf).
The case was filed by Crop’s nv of Ooigem, Belgium. Crop’s is in the frozen foods business and uses the domain name crops.be.
Crop’s is apparently named following one of the firm’s founders and is not merely named since the firm deals with, well, crops.
From time to time Crops.com has resolved to a page with links to food firms. But isn’t that what you’d expect at Crops.com?
The panel wrote:
…it seems to be more likely than not to this Panel that the Respondent purchased the disputed domain name since of its generic meaning and not with a view to the Complainant and its CROP’S Marks.
It shouldn’t have taken a UDRP to figure that out.
John Berryhill represented DigiMedia.
