Take-Two Interactive asks World Intellectual Property Forum to order transfer of GTA.tv.
Is this a case of grand theft or a legitimate intellectual property claim?
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc, maker of the popular Grand Theft Auto video game series, has filed a dispute against the owner of GTA.tv claiming the domain is cybersquatted.
The current registrant, iCity Corp, registered the domain name in 2010. Neither Archive.org nor Screenshots.com have captured the site since then and the domain doesn’t currently resolve. The domain was previously registered to someone else who parked the domain name, which showed ads related to the video game.
It’s possible that Take-Two has evidence the domain name was used to take advantage of Grand Theft Auto. But absent that, it would be a stretch to claim it should get rights to this three character domain name.
Take-Two has had a lot of success using UDRP to get domain names that include “GTA” in them. Yet in previous cases there were other words in the domain that made it clear the game was being targeted (e.g. beta or a number representing which version of the game). The company also has a UDRP pending against GTAV.com, but in that case the domain owner had a blog about Grand Theft Auto.
David Yang says
Take-Two is overdone to file this case. It’s bossy
george foshee says
i payed way too much money to be kicked off line i want my money back