Case Study Of Nissan Motor Co.

FA14: Selected Topics: eBusiness

Case Study 3 Nissan.com

10/25/2014

By: David Christopher

1. U. S. courts sometimes appoint advisors ( often called Special Masters) to help them decide cases that involve complex business or technical issues. Assume you are a business advisor to a court that is hearing an appeal of the Nissan Motor Co. v. Nissan Computer Corp. case. In about 200 words, explain why Nissan Motor Co. is so concerned about the use of these two domain names and how a monetary damages judgment of $ 10 million could be justified ( if you do not believe that the monetary damages are justified, explain why).

The concern that Nissan Motor Co. has in terms of the two domain names is the basic representation

changed their brand name around 1928 (originally Datsun), and was used primarily as Nissan Motor Co (since 1934) (Nissan Corporate information, 2014), this about 60 years before Uzi Nissan formed his company. Nissan Motor Co, being a worldwide car manufacture, not only wanted to establish their name across the world; they also were going to pay Uzi Nissan for his registered domains. Not only to add injury to insult, after Uzi Nissan refused (in 1995), Uzi then registered for another Nissan domain in 1996, this resulted in Nissan Motor Co to believe his use of the two domain names were for cybersquatting. Nissan Motor Co being a worldwide auto contender and their brand loyalty extremity high, and given the offer to purchase the original domain, having Uzi then go and register another domain, does sound suspicious and malicious in

“Cybersquatting is the practice of registering a domain name that is the trademark of another person or company in the hopes that the owner will pay huge amounts of money to acquire the URL,” (Schneider, Gary P, p. 333, 2015). In addition, under common law, Nissan Motor Company had trade name rights. Since Nissan was established before Uzi Nissan’s company, the name “Nissan” identified Nissan Motor Co.