Domain name owner and author Rogers Cadenhead is currently in a dispute with MGM Studios over the ownership of the domain name Wargames.com. Cadenhead has owned Wargames.com for the past 8 years. MGM Studios owns the rights to the movie title from the 1983 movie Wargames. The ownership of the domain name recently became a dispute when MGM Studios decided to release a remake of the movie Wargames to be released in 2007.
According to Cadenhead's blog, MGM Studios dispatched their Chicago lawyer by the name of Nathan Hole to take away ownership of Wargames.com from Cadenhead. In his blog, Cadenhead describes that:
For the past three months I've been privately engaged in a time-consuming dispute with Nathan J. Hole, a lawyer representing MGM Studios who claims that Wargames.Com, a domain that I've owned since April 16, 1998, is the rightful property of the film company because it produced the 1983 movie WarGames and registered it as a trademark.
I registered the domain to sell military wargames like Axis & Allies and Battle of Britain and was able to realize these plans earlier this year. I've never run my own business, so figuring out sales taxes and licensing, finding suppliers, running a secure web server and setting up ecommerce software took around two years.
My store has nothing to do with the film WarGames or any other movie, but attempting to convince MGM there's no infringement has been utterly fruitless.
Cadenhead also notes that the term WARGAMES was in existence before the 1983 MGM Studio movie.
In order to inform the public of how his struggle with MGM Studios is going, Cadenhead promises that he will update his blog as he goes through the arbitration process against MGM Studios. However, Cadenhead faces an uphill struggle against MGM Studios since not only does MGM Studios possess deeper pockets when it comes to financial and legal resources, but also precedent such as Apple Computer having success against domain name owners in relinquishing domain names which contain the word "pod".
The website Wargames.com is currently an online store selling military video games.
Source [WebProNews]
