Turkey's Automobile Initiative Group, which was established to develop Turkey's first domestic electric car, lost the lawsuit it filed in the United States to obtain the internet domain name "togg.com".
A computer engineer named George Gould bought the "togg.com" domain name for his company called "The Office of George Gould" in 2003, and sold his company and naming rights to another company in 2010.
The domain name is already redirected to the website of another company that provides computer infrastructure services in the state of North Virginia.
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in the lawsuit filed because TOGG's domain name was confused with its own brand, was justified by the defense authority's statements that "TOGG was founded in 2018, it produces nothing, does not sell anything, it has no customers and product awareness." refused the request.
In the lawsuit file, which briefly mentioned the history of TOGG, it was stated that the company was founded on June 28, 2018 to produce cars, the plaintiff did not have a factory yet, but in December 2019, he promoted two electric car prototypes produced by a third institution in Italy.
It was stated that the company has a large number of brand registrations in Turkey and the European Union, and on July 16, 2018, it acquired the domain name togg.com.tr.
In the judgment part of the case, it was stated that TOGG was right in its complaint about name similarity, but it was concluded that the defendant bought the domain name in 2014, 4 years before TOGG was founded, and therefore it was not possible to have bad intentions.
The defense also stated that TOGG should know that this domain name was purchased legally and used in accordance with the rules before determining the brand name in 2018, and WIPO found this defense justified. (euronews)
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