The National Arbitration Forum announced today that a ruling has been issued in favor of Pearl Jam regarding the rights to pearljams.com.

Pearl Jam filed a complaint electronically with the National Arbitration Forum on November 8, 2005, asserting legal rights to the domain name pearljams.com. The address was registered with Domain Systems, Inc. by the Respondent, Vertical Axis, Inc. c/o Domain Administrator, on August 25, 2005. The panel found that the domain was being used without permission to refer Internet users to a variety of commercial web sites unrelated to Pearl Jam, including links to "Sponsored Results for Eddie Vedder," "Eddie Vedder at Amazon.com, Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder-$9.99 and Eddie Vedder on Yahoo!Music," and, later, to categorized links, including links to "Freshwater Pearl," "Jam," and "Eddie Vedder," as well as "chess" "music,"
"Fischer," "ICC," and "Blitz."

Ruling in Pearl Jam's favor, National Arbitration Forum arbitrator Bruce E. Meyerson concluded that pearljams.com was "confusingly similar" to the PEARL JAM trademark, which was registered on August 15, 1995 with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Meyerson also found that Vertical Axis, Inc. did not have legitimate rights to, or interest in, the disputed Web address, and was using the address in bad faith for its own commercial gain.

Labels: Pearl Jam