Apparently this was the week for lawsuits.

Another Toyota wrongful death lawsuit has been filed over a fatal auto accident allegedly caused by the uncontrolled, sudden acceleration of a Toyota Corolla. Toyota has been doing its due diligence here, but its hard to put the genie back in the bottle when the lawsuits start.

McDonalds should sell its coffee in bottles as it is sued again for selling overheated coffee. The suit this time is only on the order of $7,000 or $8,000 and is expected to settle out of court. The reprocussions will make us all endure barely warm coffee eventually if this pace keeps up.

Hugh Hefner is also being sued, but by some of his Playboy shareholders who are claiming that he is not taking up any offers to sell Playboy since the business is falling apart. These suits have little or nothing to do with intellectual property, but they are interesting reading. Just like Playboy, for the articles of course.

Have no fear though, there are plenty of suits that concern Intellectual property this week.

Nintendo was awarded $1.3 million for its New Super Mario Bros title. In a Nintendo Wii piracy lawsuit, a 24-year-old Australian gamer, is facing a debt that he will probably be struggling to pay for the rest of his life after uploading and sharing the title online, pre-release. I probably wont spend $100,000 on video games over my lifetime, and I am a fan; this man wont be able to afford to rent them after this.

Along the same lines, Twilight and Summit Entertainment, which owns the stylized “TWILIGHT” trademark, is suing a company that is selling a “Twilight” DVD. While this DVD is a fan release about the actual town, Summit is not flattered.

Then, a district court judge in San Francisco on Monday denied the N.C.A.A.’s motion for dismissal in a class-action lawsuit headed by the former U.C.L.A. basketball star Ed O’Bannon. This ruling leaves the N.C.A.A.’s licensing contracts open to discovery; the danger of any lawsuit can be the fallout.

All of this, while compelling, is overshadowed by the big story in Intellectual property this week:

The World Intellectual Property Organisation or WIPO heard a bulk complaint by Inter-Continental Hotels Corporation and Six Continents Hotels which are both subsidiaries of the InterContinental Hotels Group or ICG. This suit is against a German man who owned 1,519 domain names found to contain terms which were identical or similar to owned trade marks by ICG.
The basis of the suit is the notion that the domains appeared to be associated with the hotels and caused customer confusion.

To establish the basis of the lawsuit is that the domain name is identical to, or confusingly similar to, terms to which IPC has rights.  The current owner must have no rights to the domain name; and the domain name was registered, and is being used, in bad faith.

The named Defendant is Daniel Kirchhof, who was found to hold 70,000+ domain names! Of those, 1,542 possessed undeniable references to trade marks of ICG, such as holiday-inn-swindon.com. These were found to cause consumer confusion to the extent that internet users would believe that they had arrived at an official ICG website. However, the user was given a link through to other websites offering bookings at IHG and even booking in rival hotels!

This issue highlights the need for portfolio consolidation and effective online reputation management. By picking up the gtlds, at the minimum for your brands, you not only gain a significant traffic benefit, but you prevent the need for this type of lawsuit.

If you need effective Online Reputation Management, Metamend has solutions to help keep your brands where they belong.