Domain Name Is Property In Ontario

The Court of Appeal for Ontario has ruled that a domain name is personal property and a business asset located in Ontario. Prior to this decision, there was little guidance in Canadian law on the issue of whether a domain name constitutes property.

The decision rendered on Aug 5 2011, involved a dispute between Tucows.com Co. and Renner S.A., about Tucow's right to keep the domain name "renner.com" in the face of Renner's registered trade-mark "Renner". Tucows, a technology corporation located in Toronto Ontario, had purchased the domain name renner.com from a third party in 2006. The domain name is registered with the internationally recognized Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Renner, a subsidiary of a leading US retailer JCPenney, owns the trade-mark "Renner" in Brazil and other countries.

The issue of the appeal was whether a trade-mark dispute between Tucows and Renner should be heard in Ontario. The Court held that a domain name can be considered to be property in Ontario for the purposes of rule 17.02(a) of the Ontario Rules of Civil Procedure. Justice Weiler stated that:

"In order to ground jurisdiction pursuant to rule 17.02(a) a domain name must not only be property, it must also be property in Ontario. Renner argued that the intangible nature of a domain name makes it impossible for it to be located "in Ontario". Simply because a domain name is intangible property does not mean that it cannot have a location that allows a court to ground jurisdiction."

Justice Weiler relied upon the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Williams v. Canada [1992] 1 S.C.R. 877, at pp. 891-93, which...