Tiger Woods,one of the most successful golfers of all time,submitted a comaplaint to the National Arbitration Forum,requesting the domain name charlieaxelwoods.com,to be trasnsferred to him.
Tiger Woods has a U.S. Trademark Registration for "Tiger Woods" mark,the registration being owned by Complainant ETW Corp., which is Tiger Woods’s personal services corporation.Therefore,he claimed in the complainant that the domain name is confusingly similar to the register trademark in which he has rights.
Moreover,he said the disputed domain name,charlieaxelwoods.com is identical to his child's name.
The interesting thing comes now,when "Complainant notes that Respondent offered the charlieaxelwoods.com domain name registration for sale on eBay on February 18, 2009 (nine days after the birth of Charlie Axel Woods). The listing description states, in part, as follows: “This is your chance to own the domain to a future golf legend or use it in some way to extord (sic) the current golf legend for some extra cash (not highly recomended (sic) seeing he has lots of money and lawyers.) I personally feel someone much more into golf would appreciate the address much more than myself. I am not really sure why I bought the domain, but since I am loosing (sic) my job on the 1st of April anything sounded like a good idea.”
The respondent ,Julie Lewis-Sroka,claims that the diputed domain name is not confusingly similar to any any registered or common law trademarks in which Complainant has rights. "A birth does not create a trademark or entitlement to a domain name.”,added Julie Lewis-Sroka.
The Panel decided that Tiger Woods has no trademark or service mark rights in the name “Charlie Axel Woods”,therefore the complaint was denied.
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