The legal dispute over the domain nissan.com is considered iconic. It tells the story of an entrepreneur fighting against a powerful corporation, which could be a great Hollywood movie plot. However, let's take a different perspective on this story.



In 1999, Renault bought the struggling Nissan company and appointed Carlos Ghosn as production director to lead Nissan out of crisis. However, he noticed that the domain names nissan.com and nissan.net belonged to a U.S. computer company. When Nissan contacted the domain owner, they refused to sell it for less than $15 million.

In December 1999, despite the weaknesses of Nissan's claim, they sued Nissan Computer Corp to obtain the domain name and requested $10 million in compensation. This raises questions about who made the decision to sue and why. The defendant's surname was also Nissan, which further complicated the situation.

Nissan underestimated the domain's value, and its tactics aimed to limit its use. However, traffic on the domain grew, and at peak times, it received up to half a million visitors per month. Nissan's reputation suffered, and it lost customer loyalty in the American market. Some even saw politics in this dispute since Uzi Nissan is from Jerusalem, and Carlos Ghosn is a native of Lebanon, which is at war with Israel.

The legal battle for the domain nissan.com ended in 2008, with the automaker losing the case and missing the chance to obtain the domain. The only achievement was a ban on commercial activities on the domain, and the company received a trademark. However, the practice of "reverse takeover" of domains had already been recognized as unfair, and claims against administrators whose domain registration date was earlier simply ceased to be accepted.

The final denouement of the story came last year when Carlos Ghosn was arrested, and Nissan accused the top management of using company assets for personal use. This led to a realization that the automaker spent tens of millions of dollars on unsuccessful litigation, which could have been used to buy out the domain without any fuss. The true goal might have been the process itself with expensive lawyers.

Currently, nissan.com receives more visitors than the official Nissan website, and the story serves as a textbook example studied in many law universities. The case showed that even a well-known company with many lawyers can lose in court. Companies now prefer to negotiate issues related to domain disputes instead of going to court unless there is a clear case of unfair use or infringement.

Interestingly, the domain nissan.com was free to register for nine years from 1985 to 1994, but the company's analysts failed to appreciate the prospects of internet technologies.

I am confused about the legal basis for suing a domain owner just because the name is similar to a company's name. Since when do companies have authority over domain names? I've had my own domain for 10-12 years and it's concerning that someone with a similar name could take my website through court.

What's even more interesting is that fraudulent sites and applications with names almost identical to well-known companies - designed to scam people out of their money and data - are not immediately banned, even after official complaints. The original companies don't seem to take much interest in monitoring and stopping these sites until many people have complained.