Designs by Emily Clare

Two groups are fighting over the use of the words “operation homefront” in the names of their websites. One site comes from Pat Quinn, the lieutenant governor of Illinois and the other site comes from an nonprofit agency called Operation Homefront founded by Meredith Leyva. The World Intellectual Property Organization was asked to mediate the issue and dismissed the complaint against Quinn. The issue here is that the Operation Homefront provides help to military families but because the websites are so closely named, one being .net and one being .org, people sometimes visit the wrong site looking for help. Quinn has been using the name operation homefront for some times now while the Operation Homefront organization started in 2001, they have however trademarked their name so they plan to reexamine the issue with Quinn again.
This relates to class because this is cybersquatting issue on an international level because it is dealing with the military and their families all over the world. The confusion over the two names is easily seen and one wonder because of how close the sites went up in the same time period who will win the name. Both groups are trying to help and neither is looking for money for the domain name. The thing that makes this article interesting is that the World Intellectual Property Organization is arbitrating it.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/us/12homefront.html?_r=1&sq=international%20intellectual

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