14 DAY TRIAL // Take-Two Interactive has lost the lawsuit regarding the BioShock.com web domain. Apparently the court that decided the case said that BioShock.com was not used to promote video-game related advertisements.
As fans have probably already noticed, BioShock.com is not the address of the official site of Take-Two's well known atmospheric first person shooter franchise. One can only find link related to biology related subjects.
The domain, owned by Name Administration, has been under legal dispute, Take-Two Interactive claims, according to Gamer/Law, that, “The only reason for [Name Administration's] use of the Domain Name is to trade off the value and goodwill of [Take-Two's] BioShock trademark by diverting users to third-party commercial websites for profit.”
Another argument invoked by the publisher is that Name Administration is allegedly implicated in domain squatting, that is registering a domain name involving a trademark owned by someone else with the intent of profiting through advertisements displayed on the website.
Apparently, Name Administration had registered even TakeTwoInteractive.com in the past, but it relinquished control of the domain at the request of the publisher.
The officials who decided against Take-Two's claim relied on three reasons. The first one states that Take-Two trademarked the name “BioShock” almost one year after Name Administration had put the website online.
The second one was that the term “bioshock” has been used in various commercial contexts before that cannot be accuses of bad faith. The final nail in the coffin of Take-Two's case was that there wasn't any link on bioshock.com that was not related with video games.
It seems that Take-Two will still have to use BioShockGame.com for BioShock and BioShock 2. According to Gamer/Law, BioShock2.com is in the same situation, but Take-Two has learned its lesson and registered BioShockInfinite.com, making Irrational's upcoming creation safe from domain squatting.