Trademark claim realestate.com.au causes concern
- Written by Brian Greig, REIWA
Perth 12 August 2014. The Real Estate Institute of Western Australia will be asking the News Limited controlled REA Group to withdraw its trademark application for the term ‘realestate.com.au’.
REIWA president David Airey said if this trademark was granted by the authorities it could jeopardise the use of the term ‘real estate’ by other businesses in the sector.
“The term ‘realestate.com.au’ is simply too generic and descriptive of the entire profession. Its lack of distinctiveness was the primary ground that industry groups opposed this move in 2008, and why the trademark application was subsequently withdrawn in June 2009,” Mr Airey said.
Mr Airey said that REIWA encouraged competition through quality service delivery by all players in the industry, but that the REA Group appeared to be making a technical grab for control of things that really belonged to the industry as a whole.
“The REA Group has previously tried to prohibit others from using the words ‘real estate’ in their domain names and their aggressive business model is unwelcome and unhelpful in a free market,” Mr Airey said.
Mr Airey said he was concerned for the potential for REA Group, if it got to own the term ‘real estate’, for it to then oppose other trademark applications or signs of competitor businesses.
“This is a plausible scenario given that the REA Group brought legal proceedings against Real Estate 1 Ltd in 2010, against their use of the domain and trading name ‘realestate1.com.au’.”
“This was strongly opposed by the Real Estate Institute of Australia and other property groups at that time,” Mr Airey said.
Mr Airey said many REIWA members are complaining about being ‘squeezed’ by realestate.com.au’s hard-line business strategies.
“I really question the wisdom of REA’s latest corporate strategy to further alienate real estate agents,” he said.
Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that as at June 2013 there were 35,019 real estate services businesses operating in Australia.
“A substantial proportion of these businesses use the phrase ‘real estate’ as part of their branding to assist consumers identify the industry and the range of services that those businesses provide.”
“You can imagine the cost and damage that these businesses could incur if they were forced to change their business trading name or pay a licence fee to use the word ‘realestate’,” Mr Airey said.