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Canadian Tire officially not 'Crappy'

The World Intellectual Property Organization has ruled that Canadian Tire Corporation has no legal right to control "crappytire.com" -- the Internet domain name registered to Mick McFadden of London, Ontario.

In its March 16, 2001 complaint to WIPO, Canadian Tire claimed that it is "frequently colloquially referred to or known as 'Crappy Tire' by the public." The corporation argued that its trademarks should be extended to include the phrase because its stores are "closely associated" with the slang expression. It also charged that McFadden used his site "to make rude, untrue and libellous statements about Canadian Tire."

The corporation's claim hinged on the idea that crappytire.com is "confusingly similar" to its trademarks. Canadian Tire noted that Internet searches for "Canadian crappy tire" result in many references to the corporation.

McFadden's response to Canadian Tire's complaint argued that the corporation has not trademarked the offending phrase. "Since when is the word 'Canadian' interchangeable with or similar to 'crappy'?" he asked.


Fun facts from the Canadian Tire WIPO complaint:
90% of adult Canadians shop at Canadian Tire at least twice each year.
40% of adult Canadians shop there each week.
85% of the Canadian population lives within a 15 minute drive of a Canadian Tire store.