By Martin H. Samson Data Concepts, Inc. v. Digital Consulting, Inc. , Civ. The Magistrate Judge agreed, and issued a preliminary injunction, enjoining plaintiff's further use of DCI in upper case letters in its domain name. Plaintiff provides software, data management and processing controls to its clients. It had, since 1982, used the letters dci, in lower case, to advertise its products.
Defendant primarily provides high technology educational services.
Plaintiff first used DCI.COM for its domain name in 1993. To establish its unfair competition and trade mark infringement claims, defendant was required to and did show that plaintiff was using defendant's mark, DCI, in commerce in connection with the sale of its goods and services. Defendant also demonstrated that such use was likely to cause consumer confusion. The court reached this conclusion notwithstanding the different services sold by the parties, their differing clientele, the lack of any evidence of actual customer confusion, and the relative big ticket price and therefor attendant higher degree of care consumers would exercise in purchasing the services at issue. The court based its determination on the fact that plaintiff had previously used lower case letters to market its services but had switched to upper case letters in its domain name, the fanciful nature of the defendant's mark, the fact that plaintiff's domain name used the identical mark and the use by both parties of the as a marketing channel.