The Tel Aviv District Court issued a temporary restraining order forbidding Sapir Ben Tsouk of Haifa to either operate an Internet site with the domain name Altavista or make use of that name. The restraining order was issued at the request of Alta Vista, which operates one of the most long-standing and best-known search engines on the Internet. Ben Tsouk consented to the issuing of the order.
Alta Vista operates an Internet portal with under the domain name www.altavista.com. The company alleged that Ben Tsouk stole its name and registered symbol by registering the www.altavista.co.il domain name for himself. Alta Vista claimed that after Ben Tsouk registered the competing name for himself, he offered to sell it to Alta Vista, but the company refused to buy. Ben Tsouk then published an announcement on the Internet offering the competing domain name for sale.
Alta Vista claimed that Ben Tsouk registered other competing domain names for himself, including NetVision, Pepsi, and Yahoo. The company alleged that the Internet net site operated by Ben Tsouk under the competing domain name www.altavista.co.il offers other domain names for sale.
Ben Tsouk responded that hundreds of users operate on the Internet under the name Alta Vista and that the use of the phrase “Alta Vista”, which has many uses, is common worldwide. He said that there are thousands of businesses, organizations, churches, and private individuals with the name Alta Vista. He further alleged that his Internet site does not compete with Alta Vista’s site. Ben Tsouk nevertheless did not contest the restraining order against him.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on January 23, 2001