Over the past few days the Co-operative has been “inundated” with emails and calls from agents expressing concern at the email received from ABC Photosigns regarding the trade mark application by realestate.com.au (REA).
We have looked into these concerns and on face value it would appear to us that:
- realestate.com.au is seeking to register its business name as a trade mark in several classes relating to their area of business in the real estate industry including databases, advertising (print and electronic), web services;
- realestate.com.au already has existing trade marks in these areas incorporating their logo and is simply now registering the name without the logo;
- There are many trade marks already registered that utilise “realestate” in the mark and accordingly we cannot see that REA could “corner the market” on its use.
In my discussions with Shaun Di Gregorio, the Asia/Pacific General Manager of realestate.com.au he confirmed that the abcrealestate.com.au domain name issue had been resolved with a letter to this effect being forwarded from REA to ABC Photosigns. Shaun added that REA never intended to cause any concern to the industry or the agents who as they are fully aware are their clients.
EAC will continue to monitor this application and should you wish to discuss the matter please feel free to contact me at any time or comment on this post.
