SAUSALITO, Calif. — Deutsche Lufthansa AG, operator of the largest European-based airline, was able to rein in two domain names that used brand name “Lufthansa” with the .porn and .adult extensions.
On Wednesday, a WIPO examiner suspended the Lufthansa.porn and Lufthansa.adult domains for the life of the registrations, despite the fact that the domain holder never used the sites for commercial exploitation with adult content.
Lufthansa never registered defensive domain registrations for the websites and left the two unprotected.
The examiner, in his determination, found that Antoni Przytulski of Warsaw registered bad-faith registration and use, that Przytulski had no rights to the generic top-level domains and that Deutsche Lufthansa AG already owned the trademark for the name Lufthansa.
“The use of the domain name for a pornographic website cannot be considered to constitute a legitimate noncommercial use of the domain name or a use connected with a bona fide offering of goods or services either,” Lufthansa said in its case.
In his findings, the examiner noted that Przytulski, who holds 36 other domain names, “was attempting to ride on the coattails of complainant’s mark.”