July 2019. A few weeks ago, we wrote a blog about The Trademark Office, a company that sells domain name registrations to Dutch businesses under false pretences. No sooner had we finished it than we came across another account of a new court case which fully corroborates the previous one.

Deception

‘The Court finds that The Trademark Office’s claims in its telephone calls regarding third party applications for domain names …. constitute a deception,’ was the conclusion reached in the judgement of 21 May 2019 by the Sub-District Court in Groningen.

Deceit and deception

Deceit

The ruling was issued in a case brought by The Trademark Office against 23 SMEs which had tried to annul the agreement they had signed with it. ‘The Trademark Office deliberately and consciously misled xxx … with the intention of tricking them into signing the agreements,’ the Court concluded before dismissing the case and ordering The Trademark Office to pay € 5,673.41 in legal costs.

Lesson learned?

Whether The Trademark Office has finally learned its lesson is highly doubtful, though, given that the company is known to be tenacious. So our advice is still: beware!

Bas Kist