Bizarre WIPO ruling...

[Bruce Dykes]

It really has a linguistic tie, really...

Apparently, Brazil's Corinthians Football Club (Corinthiao in Portuguese)
sued the fellow who ran the corinthians.com website, a site he used for
posting scriptural quotes from the book of Corinthians, among sundry other
uses. Here's the linguistic relevant excerpt:

>At other times Bianchi borders on bazaar. When he rationalizes
>Complainant's rights to protection despite the fact that they don't even
>have a Trademark for "CORINTHIANS" (in Brazil or anywhere else), Bianchi
>says this about their nearest T.M., "CORINTHIAO":
>
>"CORINTHIAO in Portuguese is pronounced as Corinthian in English.  In
>fact, unless the English word itself is used, phonetics (because of the
>nasal pronunciation) and correct spelling require that the word
>Corianthiao is used in Portuguese.  Thus, when comparing Corinthians with
>Corianthiao, the Panel concludes that the domain name at issue is
>phonetically nearly identical to the Complainant´s trademark CORINTHIAO."

Bianchi was the ruling judge, and the complaint was registered in the WIPO,
the World Intellectual Property Office, the IP arm of the WTO.

For the defendant's side of the story, you can go to:
http://www.politechbot.com/p-01285.html

There are other excerpts provided, but they don't really have any linguistic
relevance...

bkd