Decision-making practice in removal claim cases

Which reasons are not valid for a removal claim?

Traficom cannot:

• remove a domain name based on website content
• assess the lawfulness of website content
• order website content to be removed or website to be shut down.

You can report website content to the police. (External link)

Protection of infringed names or trademarks

The protection of registered names and trademarks begins on the date of application, unless the application has been later changed. If a domain name has been registered before the name or trademark, the domain name cannot be removed from the register. In accordance with the decision of the Market Court (MAO:585/16), priority dates based on trademark legislation are taken into consideration when deciding removal claims of fi-domain names.

The protection of an international trademark accepted in the EU or Finland begins once the original trademark registration application submitted in a foreign country has become pending, i.e. from the accepted priority date. This means that the party applying for an fi-domain name cannot necessarily establish conclusively all such trademarks in different trademark registers that could be used as grounds for a future removal claim.

If the protection of a name or trademark begins after the registration of the domain name, the domain name has not infringed the name or trademark at the time of registration. If a removal claim is based on a protected name or trademark that has been registered after the domain name, the claim will be rejected.

Can two parties have rights to the same domain name?

This could be possible if both parties have registered the same trademark in different trademark classes. If the party requesting domain name removal and the domain name holder both have rights to the same fi-domain name, the decision will be made in the favour of the one that registered the domain name first.

Established decision-making practice

A domain name can be removed from the register at the request of the owner of a protected name or trademark, if:

• the registered domain name is identical to someone else’s protected name or trademark and the domain name holder cannot present an acceptable reason for registering the domain name;
• the registered domain name is similar to someone else’s protected name or trademark and the domain name has been registered with a clear intent to benefit from it or to cause damage;
• the domain name is deliberately misspelled (typosquatting) and the domain name holder has applied for multiple domain names similar to someone else's protected name or trademark. In the above-mentioned cases, Traficom can remove domain names temporarily from the register.