What’s the difference you might ask?
One is the largest crypto exchange in the world and the other is an Australian florist.
What’s happening?
The largest crypto exchange in the world Binance lost a domain name (Binance.com.au) dispute with Binancé, an Australian florist.
Since April, Binance had been battling the Australian florist arguing that the florist has no claim to the trademark as Binance registered its trademark on November 21, 2018, a year before the florist registered its domain name on October 27, 2019.
Binance is also in a legal dispute with a Twitter user, @cryptofelon over the ownership of Canadian Binance.ca domain name.
For the Canadian domain name tussle, it all started when Binance’s director of global partnerships, Min Lin, contacted @cryptofelon via LinkedIn on November 16, 2021, concerning the Canadian domain name. @cryptofelon, claimed he wasn’t trying to sell the domain, but offered to give it up for the right price being
420 ETH or 25 BTC (over $600,000). Binance countered and offered him $6500 for the domain, which at that time was worth roughly 1.4 ETH.
With @cryptofelon refusing to budge, what followed was a number of threats from Binance officials for @cryptofelon to accept its terms.
Uhun…
On June 17, Binance lost the battle against the Australian florist. The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) stated that Binance “has not discharged its onus of demonstrating the Respondent does not have rights or a legitimate interest in the disputed domain name.
It is however noteworthy that the florist's director, Nawodycz, runs a digital marketing business. And he also works for a company called “World Bookings” as “a blockchain exchange researcher/decentralised exchange researcher, where he has been involved in creating projects in “the blockchain and crypto space”.
But Nawodycz pushed back saying that he chose “binancé” because, in French, it means “balanced” and “binancé flowers” in French translates as “paired flowers.” Touché.
On the other hand, Binance was founded in July 2017, while @cryptofelon bought the canadian domain in October 2017. While the two are still battling it out in court, it’s fair to argue that Binance wasn’t yet a popular brand and @cryptofelon might have truly bought it for personal use.
