Take-Two loses legal battle over BioShock domain

BioShock publisher Take-Two has lost a legal battle to try and wrest control of the URL www.bioshock.com from a company specialising in domain squatting, Name Administration Inc. (NA Media)

Gamer/Law reports that the publisher failed to win over a legal panel on a number of points, resulting in the site remaining under the control of NA Media, who first acquired it in 2004 - after BioShock had been unofficially announced but before Take-Two had registered it as a trademark.

The fact that Take-Two hadn't registered the trademarks at the time of the URL's registration weakened the publisher's case, but Name Administration also argued that Bioshock had other connotations separate from Take-Two's business, citing that cosmetics company Johnson and Johnson had expressed interest in the URL whilst it was mooting an unrelated Bioshock skincare range.

Take-Two had also argued that NA Media had a history of squatting its domains, having initially registered taketwointeractive.com, control of which was given to Take-Two shortly afterwards. NA Media pointed out that, at the time of the unofficial announcement, Take-Two were not openly associated with BioShock.

Bioshock2.com is currently in a similar situation, whilst Irrational Games has ensured that Bioshockinfinite.com is under its control.