easyGroup wins easy.com fight with Easynet

URL-hungry easyGroup has won the right to trademark its easy.com domain name after a legal tussle with Sky's ISP arm Easynet.

Easynet had appealed a decision by the Trade Mark Registry to grant the easy.com trademark to easyGroup but lost its case in the High Court after the judge ruled the URL was sufficiently distinctive to merit its own trademark.

Easynet was obliged to pay both sides' costs for the case.

The pair had earlier faced off over another trademark, easyTelecom, with the ISP challenging easyGroup's right to trademark the name. Easynet dropped its suit before the case came to court, however, and easyGroup now owns both the .co.uk and dot-com URLs for easyTelecom.

easyGroup has a long history of litigation over domain names, often confronting companies using an easy-prefixed URL with legal action, claiming the rivals were 'passing off' as part of the easyGroup.

Among the companies that have had calls from Stelios' lawyers are Easyart, Easybroker, EasyPizza and EIBS, which owns the Easysite content management system. All suits came to naught and the companies have retained their names and respective URLs.

easyGroup has itself been on the receiving end of a lawsuit related to branding, France Telecom-owned Orange contesting the use of the colour orange last year.