Shortly after rumours of the first BioShock emerged in October 2004, a savvy ‘domain camper’ operating under the name of Name Administration (NA Media), acquired the www.bioshock.com domain. Take Two only decided to try and do something about it at the beginning of 2010.
Setting their lawyers loose, Take Two quickly escalated the matter to the WIPO level (World Intellectual Property Organisation). The WIPO is the arbitration committee responsible (among other things) for resolving disputes over domain name ownership.
WIPO has just released their judgment. With all the legal babble removed, it boils down to three facts:
1) NA Media had acquired the bioshock.com domain in 2004, prior to Take Two acquiring any Bioshock trademarks, which they only did in 2005.
2) There was no association with Irrational Games’ development of BioShock and Take Two’s publishing deal until 2005.
3) The term ‘bioshock’ was also applicable to pharmaceutical and scientific research. Pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson had expressed interest in the domain in 2007 by way of example.
The panel decided not to award ownership of bioshock.com to Take Two. Looks like they will either have to pay out their nose for the domain, or make do with http://www.bioshockgame.com/.
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