If you think that Austrian Airlines sucks, you need to justify your sentiment by providing factual information – even if you’re squatting on the exact match dot com domain.
The owner of AustrianAirlines.com, apparently has a bone to pick with the national Austrian airline, that operates from Austrian.com and AUA.com.
The airline was founded in 1957 and holds several trademarks for “Austrian Airlines”; it proceeded with filing a UDRP at the WIPO, seeking to take control of the very domain it accidentally let expire last year:
“The Complainant claims to have been the holder of the Domain Name for more than 10 years, but, due to an employee’s mistake, the Domain Name registration was not renewed in time and the Domain Name was subsequently registered by the Respondent. After registration, the Complainant sent a demand letter to the Respondent to which it did not receive a response, the Complainant submits.”
Although “sucks” web sites can be justified as protected speech, this case appears to be different, despite the content currently available on AustrianAirlines.com.
This type of shenanigans don’t work well; on top of that, the Respondent did not respond to the UDRP. The panelist ordered the domain to be transferred to the Complainant, Austrian Airlines.
For the full text of this UDRP, click here.
this makes no sense. a friend of my grandfather had the idea for an australian airline long before they started or there even was an internets. all rights to austrailianairlines.com should belong to me. who should i sue. just because a damn errant employee of mine failed to invent the internets… why should ” I ” suffer? life is so unfair.
RaTHeaD – Missed your tongue in cheek (or is it, muff in ear) comments. Welcome back. 😀
@RaTHeaD – You are a nice example of American intelligence. Austria and Australia are two different countries. I know, for Americans it does not matter…
Mark – RaTHeaD’s trolling was a complete success 😀
Being an Austrian i know all too well about this story as it has been covered here and there (especially the original domain being dropped and snapped up appearing in some local newspapers just few days after it happened)..
i personally have never had any problems with Austrian Airlines using them more than 10y for my annual flights to Thailand but i do know about the mixed emotions that some of my countryfolks do have with them.. doesn’t justify this action though..
Daniel – I would never think of Austrian Airlines as a bad airline. Or that they’d forget to renew the domain, for that matter.