Post Domain Portion of URL's Not U.S. Trademark Infringement

On April 10, 2003, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, in Interactive Products Corporation v. a2z Mobile Office Solutions, Inc. ("Interactive Products"), ruled that there was no liability for U.S. trademark infringement where one party's trademark appeared in the post-domain path field of another party's web page uniform resource locator ("URL", e.g., dww.com/bios/dd.htm). Each web page within a website is designated by a URL which consists of a domain name (e.g., dww.com) and a post-domain path (e.g., /bios/alw.htm). The primary issue in this case was whether a likelihood of confusion as to source exists where the post-domain path of a competitor's web page contains the plaintiff's registered trademark. The Court adopted the Northern District of California decision in Patmont Motor Werks, Inc. v. Gateway Marine, Inc. that "[t]he post-domain path of a URL, however, does not typically signify source. The post-domain path merely showed how the website's data was organized within the host computer's files." For a copy of the Interactive Products decision, please visit: http://pacer.ca6.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/getopn.pl?OPINION=03a0111p.06 Summary by: Nicholas J. Whalen