Tech Shout!

Alternative Rock band Pearl Jam have finally received the rights to the internet domain name pearljams.com. The National Arbitration Forum passed the ruling in favour of the band.

Pearl Jam filed a complaint electronically with the National Arbitration Forum on November 8, 2005; emphasising legal rights to the domain name pearljams.com. The address was registered with Domain Systems Inc. by Vertical Axis Inc. on August 25, 2005.

The arbitration panel said that it noticed that the domain was being used without consent to refer Internet users to a variety of commercial Web sites unrelated to Pearl Jam, including links to “Sponsored Results for Eddie Vedder,” “Eddie Vedder at Amazon.com, Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder-$9.99 and Eddie Vedder on Yahoo!Music,” and, later, to categorized links.

National Arbitration Forum arbitrator, Bruce E. Meyerson said that that pearljams.com was “confusingly similar” to the PEARL JAM trademark, which was registered on August 15, 1995 with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Apart from that Meyerson also discovered that Vertical Axis Inc. did not have any sort of legal rights to, or interest in, the disputed Web address and was using the address in bad faith for its own commercial gain. Vertical Axis did not submit a response in the case.