The Economist has lost a bid to gain the rights to the internet domain name TheEconomist.com, Folio reports.
The World Intellectual Property Organization has denied a petition for the domain filed by the magazine last year, which had argued that the person who has owned it since 1996 has “no legitimate interests” in owning a domain identical to the magazine’s registered trademarks.
The Economist uses the domain Economist.com for its web site.
TheEconomist.com, meanwhile, was registered by a US company in 1996 and has been used as a tribute to former US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. That site has not been updated since 2002.
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In its decision, WIPO said the magazine had not showed that the owner of the domain TheEconomist.com had registered it in bad faith.
According to the WIPO document, the Economist last summer offered of $500 (£250) to purchase the domain, which the magazine believes is generating a “significant amount of Internet traffic”.
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