Judge Dora Irizarry
Developer and hotelier Trump registered his last name in capital letters as a trademark for his business interests. In addition to his "main" trump.com site promoting his brand, Trump holds domain names with "trump" followed by a geographic locationsuch as trumpchicago.comto promote TRUMP-branded real estate projects. Finding the TRUMP mark distinctive when used for Trump’s businessesand thus protected under the Lanham Actdistrict court held Web-aviso principal Yung’s use of Internet domain names trumpabudhabi.com, trumpbeijing.com, trumpindia.com and trumpmumbai.com (collectively Domain Names) violated the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. No reasonable juror could find the Domain Names not confusingly similar to the TRUMP mark. Their inclusion of geographic terms mimicked many of the domain names Trump uses to promote TRUMP-branded properties. Evidence of Yung’s bad faith in the Domain Names’ use was overwhelming. Yung lacks any intellectual property rights in the Domain Names. Further, the only reason why the Domain Names have any value was because their use of the TRUMP mark could be confused with Trump’s legitimate websites.
