State has no business claiming generic names for its own

Thursday, 29 November 2001

The Dutch state is undertaking the largest infrastructure project ever in Holland and with it they set up a web site to inform about the project. The project involves building the “Betuwelijn” freight rail link from Rotterdam to Germany. The domain name, betuweroute.nl, is generic and descriptive and means “a route or path through the Betuwe region”. According to the state, the website gives all the information that is needed to anyone interested in the project. However people who are opposing to the giant project seem to disagree. A Dutch foundation registered a variation of the project’s domain name.. The domain registration office accepted the registration of betuwe-reute.nl. The Dutch state were not quite as happy with it since they thought this would confuse users looking for information about the project. The state started a legal fight against the foundation and lost. An individual protester, Koen Ijff, later used the same domain name. When the state pulled Koen into court they won. A debate started about the content and legal rights to domain names and the words “freedom of expression” were mentioned. The state continues to say that they have the right to the names since there is a risk for confusion. This didn’t stop Koen from retrying the case he lost and this time he won. The judges claim that the Dutch state has no business claiming generic names for its own exclusive usage.
Source: Content-Wire
http://www.content-wire.com/Home/Index.cfm?ccs=86&cs=1138