easyJet Gets Tough On Domain-Name Rivals

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December 19, 2000 (5:39 AM EST)

By Barnaby Page,

British airline easyJet is making life difficult for Web businesses with similar monikers.

It says they can't use the word 'easy' in their domain names and has threatened legal action against some.

But protesters, led by auto-rental company EasyCar and Web-hosting firm Easyspace, say they'll fight back.

"At the end of the day, the court will look at the effect on the consumer and ask whether the customer is going to be misled," said Rachael Ott, a lawyer with London firm Crowell & Moring who is advising the protesters.

EasyGroup, the business of which easyJet is part, would have to persuade a court that "the use of [the word] constitutes a misrepresentation to prospective customers as to the origin of [its] goods or services," and that easyGroup has been damaged, she said.

Usually, she added, courts would only protect a name when both parties were in similar businesses. For example, Britain's Granada TV was not able to stop carmaker Ford Motor Co. from branding a new car as Granada.

And rulings by an international intellectual-property organization agreed.

In 10 cases submitted to the World Intellectual Property Organization's Arbitration and Mediation Center, WIPO ruled that the owners could keep their domains because the services they offered were not similar to easyGroup's.

The protesters' website lists some 225 domains using the word, from EasyAutos to EasyZone.

Paul Lomax, CTO at ActiveBytes Software LLC, Wilmington, Del., which runs the U.K.'s Freeparking domain-name-registration service, said his company alone had registered more than 150 names using the word 'easy.' He urged easyGroup to abandon its litigation.

EasyGroup helped create Europe's burgeoning market for low-cost, no-frills airlines with the launch of its easyJet service. Its other businesses include easyRentacar and the Internet cafe chain easyEverything.

As easyJet PLC it launched an IPO on the London stock market Nov. 22

Chairman Stelios Haji-Ioannou, a colorful and outspoken figure with an image similar to Virgin's Richard Branson, has positioned his business as the champion of the little man.

He has taken on such heavyweight opponents as British airline BA, which he says is illegally cross-subsidizing its easyJet rival Go, and Barclays Bank, owner of London Luton airport, which Haji-Ioannou says levies excessive landing fees.

Whether his attempt to control one of the most common English words will sit comfortably with that image is not easy to say.