Filmmaker Spike Lee has beaten Philippine-based porn cybersquatter Mercedita Kyamko, whose SpikeLee.com redirected visitors hoping for information about the director of Do The Right Thing, 4 Little Girls,and She Hate Me to an adult Website.
Lee won his case at the World Intellectual Property Organization, the U.N. agency that found against Kyamko earlier this year in a cybersquatting case involving rock guitarist/composer/bandleader Carlos Santana. As had SpikeLee.com visitors, CarlosSantana.com visitors found themselves routed to an adult site at ClubHongKong.com.
Canadian attorney Edward Chiasson, a neutral arbitrator the WIPO named to consider the Lee case, ruled that Kyamko registered SpikeLee.com in bad faith, and the domain will be transferred to Lee within 10 days of the ruling unless Kyamko appeals the ruling in court. Kyamko reportedly registered SpikeLee.com in 1999.
“It is difficult to ascertain any good faith use by [Kyamko] of the subject domain name and the actual use raises a clear inference of bad faith,” Chiasson wrote. “The subject domain name replicates the Complainant’s mark and is used solely to attract users to a pornographic Website.
“[WIPO policy states that] bad faith can occur when the domain name holder has intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to its Website or other on-line location, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant's mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of its Website or location or of a product or service on its Website or location.”
The WIPO had ruled in favor of Santana in February. Kyamko “has a history of registering domain names to prevent an owner of a trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name,” Chiasson wrote in his Lee finding. “In [the Santana case, Kyamko] did not have rights or legitimate interest in the domain name but, instead, was ‘using the name in a parasitic fashion to attract Internet users to its site’.”
Santana, too, was awarded the domain in question after the WIPO ruled against Kyamko in February. Kyamko reportedly never appeared to make any defense in either the Lee or the Santana cases.
