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Take-Two Loses The Fight For BioShock Domain

Posted August 25, 2010 by M.H. Williams

Gamer/Law is reporting that Take-Two Interactive has lost its legal battle with Name Adminstration, Inc. over the URL www.bioshock.com. Name Adminstration is a professional domain name purchaser who bought the domain in December 2004, after rumors of the first BioShock started in October 2004. This year Take-Two began proceedings to gain the rights to the domain with arbitration proceedings taking place in May 2010 before the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Take-Two was unable to convince the WIPO panel that the website was registered in bad faith. The panel determined that the website came prior to Take-Two trademark on the BioShock name, the company had no association with BioShock until 2005, and that BioShock.com was ultimately associated with other industries.

BioShock2.com is also not under Take-Two’s control at this time, but BioShockInfinite.com is being used by Irrational Games for the newest BioShock game in development.

M.H. Williams has been writing in some form or another for ten years and has been a hardcore gamer since the NES first graced American shores.  You can catch him on Twitter as @AutomaticZen, Google+ as himself, or on his personal Facebook page.