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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday July 12 2015, @01:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the that-paper-might-be-brittle dept.

The University of Oxford has gone all medieval over some dot-com domain names, insisting that it be handed control of oxfordcollegeirl.com and oxfordcollegesc.com due to rights dating back to 1214 A.D.

A panelist at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) agreed, although his job was made easier by the fact that the current owners of the domains, Oxford College for PhD Studies, didn’t bother to respond to the complaint.

It is debatable whether the University of Oxford has the right to the domains even though "in the year 1214 the body of Masters and Scholars at Oxford was placed under the jurisdiction of a Chancellor, to be appointed by the Bishop of Lincoln" and the institution has a variety of "Oxford" trademarks.

But the world-famous learning institution was no doubt driven to press its rights when it saw what appears on the websites.

While the "Oxford College for PhD studies" purports to offer a whole range of courses, and prominently features people receiving degrees, it goes to some lengths to explain – in fancy language – that it is basically a sham.

"We neither issue nor do we in any way hold ourselves out to or purport to issue any degrees, statements, or pronouncements of any type or description which might be taken to be or otherwise interpreted as educational award or scholastic approbation, and nor do we intend to at any juncture," the website reads.

...

The panelist, Tobias Malte Müller, decided to largely overlook the addition of "irl" and "sc" on the end of the "oxfordcollege" domains, claiming that the domains "wholly incorporate the Complainant's trademark and the addition respectively of the descriptive elements "collegeirl" and "collegesc" does not serve to distinguish the disputed domain names from the OXFORD trademarks."

"It is the view of this Panel that the addition of the element 'sc' results to be a common typographical error when typing 'colleges.com,' while the addition of the element 'irl' refers to Ireland, which is where the Respondent is based. Both added elements will therefore be understood to be a reference to a satellite or associated college of the Complainant in Ireland. In any case both do not serve to distinguish the disputed domain names."

From this, it seems that you can no longer run a simple diploma mill with a name pretty similar to a prestigious world renowned university. Who'd a thunk it?


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  • (Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Sunday July 12 2015, @11:42PM

    by M. Baranczak (1673) on Sunday July 12 2015, @11:42PM (#208266)

    Wow. These are some hard-core freaks. Makes Dr. Bronner sound like the voice of reason. And check out their coat of arms [wordpress.com], much more impressive than the other Oxford. [ox.ac.uk]

    As I write this, the domain names still point to the freaks. If that changes (should be soon, but you never know) we'll still be able to follow the freaks on their Wordpress page. [wordpress.com]

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