Go on.
He's not trading using the Apple Computers trademark nor is their any confusion. There is nothing clear about his intention, there is no mens rea nor actus rea that can be established from the information in this thread AFAICT.
Apple have no automatic right to everything bearing the name "Apple". They have no more right to the bogusapple.com domain than they have a right to a box of [fruit] apples from your local grocer.
Will they get the domain if they wish it? Are mega-corps in control of the law in the USA?
WIPO - they've erred before and will do so again I feel; they appear to have a presumption that the world belongs to corporations and don't have an interest in protecting the rights of citizens. Not unlike some governments it seems.
Given the way he's using it I doubt Apple would ever do anything more than ask him for the domain. But if he were to do something like put up a porn site or even run ads, they might be pissed off enough to sue him for the domain + damages - and they'd likely win.
Moreover reading the page [as it was presented to me] shows he's clearly not intending to infringe the mark with the content of the website either. IIRC he makes it clear that he/the page doesn't have an association with Apple Computers.
If he puts up a porn site it will be even more obvious that he's not selling computers or consumer electronics. The actual ability to infringe Apple's marks would decrease hugely. Big name corps get special additional protections in some jurisdictions however that ignore things like the actualities of the situation.
If they sue him they'd probably win regardless of the spirit of the particular statutes that apply.
Do you think that these guys - http://www.usapple.org/ - are infringing Apple's trademarks too?
Apple is a tricky word because it's also generic. It's easier to discuss this when we're talking about an obvious trademark.
See: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-disputes-21-squa...
Those domains and bogusapple.com, as it is used here, are identical - and they are frequently lost by their owners whenever the people who own the trademarks go after them.
As DannyBee alluded to, when those corporations go up against deep pocketed squatters with good domain lawyers, they can sometimes be outsmarted and not get the domains. But the vast majority of the time they are successful.
People get scared by legal threats from massive corporations - that doesn't mean that proper legal process requires [or should require] that such domains are handed over.
That's an interesting viewpoint, but not one supported by the law.
Ggoogle is typo squatting. There's nothing inherently wrong with you using that domain but serving ads or having a search engine there would be most likely trademark infringements. If you had similar livery to Google then you'd probably be 'passing off' (in the legal sense).
Personally I find nothing morally or legally wrong as long as you make it clear that the origin of the domain content is not Google Inc. and that you don't use the domain commercially (in the copyright law sense of commercial).
Perhaps you can explain how a non-commercial use of that domain harms Google and indicate which laws prevent such a use.
Google wisely own ggoogle.
There are live examples of similar named sites: moogle, agoogle are domain-squatted, foogle hosts a business, etc..
Nothing here has anything to do with trademark infringement. Period. I started to write a longer post detailing all the legalities involved here, but it's simply not necessary.
Additionally, in every WIPO appeal i've been involved that bears any similarity to this case, where WIPO ruled in favor of the claimant, it was overturned on appeal to a court of competent jurisdiction.
As for the appeals process itself, yet it is a loophole that you can file an appeal in front of any podunk judge that will hear the case, whether or not he's ever even been on the internet or knows what a domain name is - and if that judge finds in your favor, you get to keep the domain. Again, that doesn't make what I said untrue.
You're clearly a typo-squatter or somebody who otherwise traffics in TM domains, so I'm never going to get you to agree with me on this, and that is fine, we don't need to agree. But your personal attacks are unnecessary.
You caught me.