Canadian Tire Corp. on Thursday lost a battle for Web domain name 'crappytire.com' when an arbitrator ruled the company could not claim special rights to the expression.
The Canadian retailer had argued it was often known locally as "Crappy Tire," which it said was not a derogatory term but a slang expression derived from Canadian Tire trade marks.
"Generally, the usage does not have a negative connotation but is an impertinent reference to a mass merchandiser," the company told a Canadian arbitrator appointed by the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).
The company accused the registered owner of crappytire.com, Canadian Mark McFadden, who owns 70 sites, of using it to make "rude, untrue and libellous statements about Canadian Tire."
But the arbitrator ruled that Canadian Tire had failed to establish any rights to the name, WIPO said in a statement.
Mr. McFadden argued there could be little confusion between the name of the site and that of the Canadian retail giant.
"Since when is the word 'Canadian' interchangeable with or similar to 'crappy'?" he told WIPO.