More on 'Crappy Tire'

[P©WÉ®T©©LMAN]

Canadian Tire loses fight to call itself 'crap'

In what must be one of the weirdest ever domain dispute cases, Canadian Tire has lost the battle to extend its trademark to the words "crappy tire".

While "crap" would be taken by most people to denote a negative feeling, Canadian Tire is having none of it and wanted WIPO to hand over

to it. Canadian Tire claims that in Canada it is colloquially called Crappy Tire but this has become so ingrained that it no longer means anything bad (it is an "impertinent reference" says the company).

True as it may be, however, the law does not allow for trademarks to be extended to entirely different words used in slang.

The company claimed that by owning the domain, Mick McFadden was "attempting to create an impression of an association with Canadian Tire". Somewhat unlikely since he uses the site to slag Canadian Tire off. In fact, later on in the WIPO judgment, Canadian Tire indeed mentions that: "the Respondent has used his website to make rude, untrue and libelous statements about Canadian Tire".

But - and here's the catch - "in an attempt to force Canadian Tire to pay an exorbitant sum of money for the transfer of the domain name in dispute".

Mick McFadden is having none of it. The judgement reads: "Respondent inquires 'since when is the word "Canadian" interchangeable with or similar to "crappy"'?" Fair point, Mick.

He also points out that if you tap "crappy tire" into Google, you'll get

6,380 results (as of 13 April this year anyway). Mick points out "vast majority of returns were for references to 'tires' that were 'crappy' and had nothing to do with Canadian Tire".

Do you get the feeling that Mick was loving every minute of this? Cause I do.

Anyway, needless to say, WIPO dismissed the complaint and now Canadian Tire has to live with the fact that it has no right to call itself "crappy". What a blow to corporate confidence. ®

[Fuddzy]

Gotta love that kind of crap.......err "shit"

Go.. Mike and God Love Ya

Fud

[Upscale]

Love it. Maybe they've come to an accomodation. Right now anyway, it's showing a bad gateway when trying to load it.

[P©WÉ®T©©LMAN]

The hardest thing to come to grips with these days is which Tim Hortons to stop at on the way to Canadian Tire.....& then you have to decide all over again on the way back. Here in Collingwood, Ontario, we have Three Tim Hortons & a clapped out Crappy Tire, being a small town we have to get used to driving across town only to find that the seasonally current item or the sale item from their flyer is out of stock because the Mis-manager didn't think it would sell even though the Corporations head office & the less important general public feels otherwise.

Unbelievably they are in the process of building a massive flagship Canadian Tire to replace the current 'Crappy' one at the other side of town, I'm told it comes complete with new Owner / Managers, but what about the tired & lazy old staff....can they be re-trained to perform even the moderate customer service tasks??? We'll see.

Funny how Tim Hortons has to keep up though, they are building one of those drive through only Island type coffee shops in the opposite corner of town.....oh well & round trip will enable us to stop at two Tim Hortons on the way to the new Crappy tire & two completely different ones on the way back...beauty Eh? Only in Canada....LOL...never mind the coffee numbs the pain.