Last week a Swedish newspaper reported that Volo Auto Museum's domain name dispute had been resolved. The source for this news story was a Volvo corporate executive.
The facts surrounding the domain name dispute are relatively simple. Volo Auto Museum whose internet address is www.volocars.com, sits in the center of Volo, Illinois, a midwestern community where approximately 200 citizens live and work. The auto museum has been at the same location for over 40 years and has been owned and managed by the same family for that entire period of time. The museum has a well-deserved worldwide reputation for displaying and making available for purchase hundreds of classic, antique and American produced muscle cars. The museum proudly displays any number of Ford, General Motor and Chrysler vehicles, most built between 1900 and 1975. In November 1997, the museum opted to become part of the modern Internet universe, registering its domain name, volocars.com, creating a web site with detailed photographs of hundreds of displayed vehicles. The Volo Auto Museum website gets several million "hits" per month.
A gaggle of Volvo lawyers decided that the auto museum was a perceived financial threat to Volvo (now owned by the Ford Motor Corporation). To that end, the Volvo lawyers elected to initiate a domain name dispute and filed a complaint with an international tribunal known as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The Volvo complaint claimed that the tiny auto museum, which incidentally is located on Old Volo Road in Volo, Illinois (hence Volo Auto Museum), was doing business in "bad faith" -- because Volvo's Internet domain name was "volvocars.com" (however Volvo registered its domain name in 2000 -- years after the auto museum registered its name).
The museum elected to challenge Volvo and filed a WIPO response urging that the Volvo claim be rejected for a variety of reasons that included the inability of the Swedish corporation to disenfranchise an entire village (Volo, Illinois). The public learned of the dispute and commenced sending hundreds of emails, letters and faxes to Volvo, essentially suggesting that Volvo's conduct was unacceptable.
Because of unfavorable worldwide PR, Volvo sent a corporate representative to visit with the Grams family -- they have owned and operated the museum for over 40 years -- urging a quiet dispute settlement. During the personal visit and subsequent telephone calls, Volvo insisted that they wanted to make a written settlement proposal -- which they did on June 2, 2003. The SETTLEMENT OFFER recited that the museum would forfeit its domain name (by transferring it to Volvo), but the museum could continue in business using Volo Auto Museum so long as they did not expand their rural enterprise. Finally, the Volvo settlement offer demanded that the Grams family [would] be prohibited from making any public comment of statement regarding the "settlement".Greg Grams, director of Volo Auto Museum asks: "Can a foreign corporation really dictate the manner in which a rural Illinois auto museum use the Internet to display American vehicles? Why would the Grams family knuckle under and simply give up the name that has been associated with their home and museum for over 40 years? The better question is how can Volvo have the 'chutzpa' to demand, as a condition of settlement, that the museum simply relinquish its identity? Perhaps a motivated reader can supply an answer!"
Courtesy of the Volo Auto Museum
