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When the .ca registry was set up, the names of all Canadian municipalities were reserved and could not be registered.  However, enterprising domainers often registered geo domains that were two-word combinations, which included the city name.  These domains may now be open to be taken away by the municipalities, following the recent decision about the domain NiagaraRegion.ca. The Regional Municipality of Niagara had the domain Niagara.on.ca reserved for them.  John Vail, a real estate agent in nearby Oakville, registered the domain NiagaraRegion.ca and redirected this domain to his real estate agency website. The municipality contacted Mr Vail to see if he would be willing to sell the domain to them.  He indicated an interest, but failed to respond when they only offered the meagre sum of $500 Canadian. As a result, the municipality filed a complaint under the Canadian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (the equivalent of the UDRP for .ca domains).  Unfortunately, Mr Vail never responded, so we do not have his side of the story. The panel found for the municipality and ordered that NiagaraRegion.ca be transferred to the municipality. In making its decision, the panel found that NiagaraRegion.ca is confusingly similar to a Mark in which the municipality had rights prior to the registration of the domain name and continues to have such rights.  In establishing this, the panel agreed with the municipality's reliance on trademarks, including for the "Niagara Regional Police Service" and the "Regional Municipality of Niagara Police Services Board," despite these terms' obvious difference from the term "Niagara Region."  Particularly worrisome for Geo Domainers is the panel's statement:  "an internet user could reasonably mistake and associate the Registrant's domain with the region."  Wouldn't this be true of all .ca geo domains ? The panel then went on to find that Mr. Vail had no legitimate interest in the domain name.  Again, the language used by the panel is very worrisome, not just for geo domainers, but all .ca domainers.  The panel states:  "registering a domain in order to redirect internet traffic to a commercial website does not constitute a use in good faith."  (The irony is that if the traffic had been redirected to a nonprofit site, the result may have been different). The panel concluded that Mr. Vail had registered the domain name in bad faith.  This was because his real estate business was not located in the Niagara region, but in a nearby city.  The panel states:  "the fact that the Registrant does not do any business in the Niagara region and that the terms 'Niagara Region' are deeply associated in a reasonable person's mind to the local regional municipality should have incited the Registrant to register a different name." The panel also found that Mr. Vail acted in bad faith as he had registered five other domain names that were supposedly registered to prevent persons who have rights in marks from registering these marks as domain names.  However, all of the names that Mr. Vail registered seem pretty generic, and ironically, another one was a .ca geo domain - HamiltonWentworth.ca.  There were also two three letter domains - jjb.ca and cne.ca.  The final two were realestateinvestor.ca and torontoindustrial.ca. In summary, it seems to be risky to hold a .ca geo domain, despite the fact that all of the municipalities have already had their names pre-reserved.  If you do hold one of these domains, to avoid losing it in a dispute, it would be wise to ensure that it is not used for profit, and that it is only used for local activities. Source: Jeff Behrendt writing fro Domainnews.com - Thursday March 13th, 2008