My Name, Your Domain Name

Complainant, Peter Bober, is an attorney and mayor of the city of Hollywood, Florida. He is the youngest mayor ever elected to this position and the first of Cuban ancestry.  Mr. Bober and his wife have a law practice, Bober & Bober, P.A., located in Hollywood, Florida, where they specialize in employment law.  He has published legal articles in various law journals and is active in the Hollywood, Florida community. 

Despite this, the Panel denied Mr. Bober's Complaint which sought transfer of the disputed domain name, "peterbober.com".  The disputed domain was not being actively used by Respondent. However, in denying the Complaint, the Panel determined that Mr. Bober had failed to show that his name, Peter Bober, had achieved common law trademark rights as it was not identified with a particular business.  As a general matter, personal names are not protected under the Policy, including the personal names of business men and politicians, unless the business person has established that his name is synonymous with a particular business and that good will exists not only in the name of the business but in the name of the individual with which it is identified, or where a politician has derived commercial success from the use of his name, such as through the authorship of commercially successful books.  In this case, Mr. Bober's law practice was called "Bober & Bober P.A.".  The Panel commented that if he had perhaps been offering legal services under the name "Law Offices of Peter Bober", the result of this case may have been different.  Although Mr. Bober has been published, his authored articles were of a scholarly nature, not commercially successful books. Under all of these circumstances, common law trademark rights in a personal name were not established by Complainant. Peter Bober v. National Institute for Mortgage Education, WIPO Case No. D2008-1668