Friday June 16th, 2000

A legal attempt by one of Bernie Ecclestone's companies, "Formula One Licensing", to claim over the web domain name f1.com was recently denied by the WIPO Arbitration and Administration Center.

The company, one of Formula One Management's divisions, had filed a complaint to the World Intellectual Property Organisation on March this year, asserting that the f1.com domain should be transferred to them, since FOL owns the legal and exclusive rights to the name. FOL's complaint further asserted that the current domain name owner acted in bad faith, trying to sell the domain to the highest bidder, including an attempt to receive a high amount of money from FOL itself.

However, in reviewing the complaint, the WIPO panelist, William R. Cornish, ruled that Ecclestone' office had failed to prove the necessary elements for such a case: that the domain owner had no rights or legitimate interest in the domain name, and that he registered the domain name in bad faith. Cornish thus denied FOL's request to transfer the domain to them.

The decision also reveals that in the mean time, the f1.com domain was sold to Formula1.com LTD.

Ecclestone owns the trademarks for F1, Formula One and Formula 1 and while the WIPO's arbitration decision halts him for now from gaining the domain at hand, he is still entitled to seek legal remedy in court which could prevent usage of those trademarks for commercial purposes.

The full decision by Cornish can be found on the WIPO website, at http://arbiter.wipo.int/domains/decisions/html/d2000-0193.html. Incidently, earlier last month Jordan Grand Prix had won a similar arbitration, over the domain name jordanf1.com. The domain had been transferred to them, after the WIPO arbiter ruled that the domain name was registered and used in bad faith.