14 DAY TRIAL // Video game publisher Activision Blizzard has initiated action with the National Arbitration Forum aimed at taking control over the ModernWarfare3.com website address, which has been used to advertise rival title Battlefield 3.
Activision says that the site has been redirecting traffic to the official Battlefield 3 website from Electronic Arts and that it has run ads from both Best Buy and GameStop, showing that it is a commercial venture and that it is acting in bad faith.
At the moment, the site is no longer sending traffic to another site and no longer has any adverts.
ModernWarfare3.com has been initially registered during early 2009 and the description says that it is “100 percent unofficial” and that it aims to gather all fans of the Modern Warfare series but that it also acts as a parody when it comes to the upcoming launch of Modern Warfare 3.
In order to get control of the site , Activision Blizzard needs to show that it is run in a commercial manner and that it is infringing on its Call of Duty or on its Modern Warfare intellectual property.
The complaint says that Activision will not seek further action if the owner is “making a legitimate noncommercial or fair use of the domain name, without intent for commercial gain to misleadingly divert consumers or tarnish the trademark.”
The complaint coming from Activision also says that it has spent no less than 24 million dollars until now in the United States in order to market Call of Duty and Modern Warfare 3.
This is quite a sum considering that the game is set to be launched during November and the big marketing push will probably come in September and will continue until the end of the Christmas shopping season.
Analysts have predicted that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will be another blockbuster and will sell more than 20 million copies.