Future Media Architects, Inc. v. Deutsche Lufthansa AG
May 22, 2008 – 3:56 am
Future Media Architects, Inc. (FMA) has recently filed a lawsuit in federal court against Deutsche Lufthansa in response to Lufthansa’s UDRP case against FMA claiming the rights for the domain name LH.com.
Lufthansa’s UDRP case against FMA was almost guaranteed to be on FMA’s side for a couple of factors including the domain name’s nature consisting of two characters which makes it almost impossible for anyone to claim its ownership, basically because LH is an abbreviation for so many words. Another factor is Lufthansa’s actual name which is Deutsche Lufthansa, if they wanted to get a short domain name they should have gone for DL.com instead. FMA lost the case with a weird decision made by the three panelists, on the other hand one of the panelists, Mr. David E. Sorkin, realized Lufthansa did not have the rights to claim its ownership of the domain name and therefore dissented (read the UDRP case at the very end).
The current federal court filed by FMA has a lot of interesting information, FMA (represented by Kenyon & Kenyon LLP) pointed out a very serious issue on Lufthansa’s trademark; Lufthansa in their trademark state that they were founded in 1926, while it is true that Lufthansa was founded back then, however it is not the same Lufthansa we know today. Lufthansa was refounded in 1954 (Source #1, #2) and it is completely different than the old Lufthansa that was founded in 1926. Therefore, their trademark is based on false information and that is going to cause a lot of mess regarding its validity. FMA also demands the UDRP decision to be reversed and to obtain their rights for the domain name back.
Another interesting part about this case is Kenyon & Kenyon themselves, they are one of the oldest law firms in the world, they were founded in 1879 and represented people we only read about, people like Thomas Edison. More information on them here.