May 18, 2001
Local lawyers win back Dell domains
Doug Buchanan
The Dell Computer Corp. has won back 10 contested domain names from an alleged cybersquatter in an arbitrators' decision favoring arguments made by two attorneys with the Columbus office of Jones Day Reavis & Pogue.
Dell, the Round Rock, Texas-based computer retailer, won the contested domains from a Houston man named Byron Hoffman. The Internet addresses included dellconnect.com, dellpower.com and several misspellings of the company's name.
The complaint to take over the names was filed in March with the World Intellectual Property Organization's Arbitration and Mediation Center by Jones Day attorneys Joe Dreitler.
The complaint said the dispute goes back to August last year, when the company found out about the contested domain names. It said when the company contacted Hoffman, he claimed he had rights to the domains because his middle name was Dell.
Dreitler and Downey, though, found previous cases of Hoffman registering names similar to other company's trademarks in ways that could confuse Internet users, one of the standard definitions of cybersquatting.
The arbitrator agreed the disputed Dell domain names also were likely to cause confusion.
"There can be no question here that each of the contested domain names, by virtue of its inclusion of the term "Dell" ... will cause user confusion," the arbitrator wrote in his decision this month. "... In all likelihood, this is the very reason why (Hoffman) acquired all these domain names in the first place."
Dreitler, who has represented Dell on various trademark and Internet-related issues for about three years, said he was hopeful the arbitrator would see through Hoffman's claim that Dell was his middle name and therefore he had some rights to the domains.
"The defense to such a claim is that there is no bad faith – and if it is your name there is a good chance of raising that defense," Dreitler said by e-mail. "However, we are gratified that the panel went beyond that and looked at Mr. Hoffman's activities in total and found that there was bad faith."
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