Politico sues politico

UK right-wing blog Tory-Politico.com has been hit with a cease and desist order from US site politico.com.

The lawyer's letter claims the domain name is "confusingly similar to the POLITICO mark in that it wholly incorporates the "Politico" mark and merely adds the descriptive word 'tory' to the Domain Name."

Even stranger, the ambulance chasers then use Alexa.com rankings to claim that as only 57.3 per cent of its traffic comes from the UK, much of its remaining visitors must be from the US.

Capitol News, the owners of Politico.com, which has been covering the US political scene since 2007, demands an end of all use of the name Tory Politico and transfer of the domain within ten days.

Jason Brown, founder and editor of Tory Politico, told The Reg: "We have been online since March last year. I was well aware of politico.com, and of Politico Publishing - a UK firm and of course its wider use as a normal word. I'm refusing to change the domain or hand it over to them. I imagine they will escalate this. I would like to take it to ICANN arbitration rather than pay a fortune in legal fees."

The site disputes Alexa's figures, preferring Google Analytics, which reckons their readers are 85 per cent UK based and 5 per cent from the US.

Brown ends by warning Soho Politico.com - which describes itself as: "Gay male, mid-twenties, living in London's Soho. I blog on UK politics from a left-liberal perspective, and on LGBT issues" - to watch out for a similar legal letter. ®

Brown's full post is here.

Bootnote

Just for reference, The Oxford American Desk Dictionary and Thesarus (2001 edition) gives the defintion of politico as: noun, colloquial, politician.