''Nissan Motors v. Nissan Computer'' was a lengthy court case between the two parties over use of the name Nissan and the domain name nissan.com.
The case has received national attention in the U.S.
Background
Nissan Motor Company
Beginning in the late 1970s,
Datsun began progressively fitting its cars with small ''"Nissan"'' and ''"Datsun by Nissan"'' badges. The company eventually changed its branding at 1,100 Datsun dealerships. In autumn 1981, Datsun announced that its name would be changed in the United States. Between 1982 and 1986, the company transitioned from its ''"Datsun, We Are Driven!"'' to its ''"The Name is Nissan"'' campaign.
[What's in a name?]
- ZCCA Five years after the name change program was over, cars in some export markets continued to display badges bearing both names and ''Datsun'' still remained more familiar than ''Nissan''.
[Aaker, David A. ''Managing Brand Equity : Capitalizing on the Value of a Brand Name'', New York: The Free Press, 1991 Chapter 3, Pg. 56]
Uzi Nissan
In 1980, Uzi Nissan founded Nissan Foreign Car, an automobile service, in Raleigh, North Carolina.
In 1987, Uzi Nissan founded Nissan International, Ltd, an
import/export
''Import/Export'' is an Austrian drama film by the director Ulrich Seidl from 2007. It was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and won the Grand Prix - Golden Apricot reward at the Yerevan International Film Festival. The ...
company that traded primarily in heavy equipment and computers.
On 14 May 1991, Uzi Nissan founded Nissan Computer Corporation, which provides sales and service of personal computers, servers, and computer parts, as well as internet hosting and development. Nissan Computer registered ''nissan.com'' for its use on 4 June 1994, five years prior to Nissan Motor Corporation's interest in the domain.
In July 2020, Uzi Nissan died of complications from
COVID-19
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...
.
Case
Nissan Motors considered Nissan Computer's use of the name to be
trademark dilution, and laid claim to the domain by alleging
cyber squatting
Cybersquatting (also known as domain squatting) is the practice of registering, trafficking in, or using an Internet domain name, with a bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else.
The term is derived f ...
. However, Nissan Computer was named after its owner, Uzi Nissan.
Following the outcome of the case, Nissan Motors uses the name ''nissanusa.com'' for its U.S. website.
References
{{Reflist
United States trademark case law
Nissan