Internet Trademark Case Summaries

Continental Airlines, Inc. v. continentalair.com

2009 WL 4884534 (E.D. Va. Dec. 17, 2009)

Second, the continentalair.com domain was identical or confusingly similar to the Continental Marks.  Finally, the court found that the registrant registered and used the continentalair.com domain name with a bad-faith intent to profit from the use of the Continental Marks.  The registrant had no independent rights in the Continental Marks or the domain name, and he did not use the marks in connection with any bona fide offering of goods or services, or for any noncommercial fair use purposes.  Rather, the registrant’s intent in registering and using the domain name was to profit from the fame of the Continental Marks by diverting Continental’s customers to competitors’ websites.  Further, the registrant had offered and continued to offer to transfer the domain name to any third party for financial gain, and had a history of registering domain names identical or confusingly similar to other famous marks.  Accordingly, the court granted Continental’s motion for default judgment and ordered: (1) Verisign, the .com registry, to transfer the registrar for the continentalair.com domain name from the South Korean registrar to Network Solutions, and (2) Network Solutions to transfer the domain name to Continental.