Teletech Customer Care Management v. Tele-Tech

Citation: Teletech Customer Care Management v. Tele-Tech Co., 977 F. Supp. 1407 (C.D. Cal. 1997).

Factual Background
Plaintiff, a provider of telephone and Internet customer services and owner of the federally registered service mark TELETECH, sought to enjoin defendant Tele-Tech from using its service mark as an Internet domain name, arguing that defendant’s registration of the domain name “teletech.com” without the distinguishing hyphenation present in defendant’s company name Tele-Tech prevented potential customers from locating plaintiff on the Internet, thereby causing hardship to plaintiff.

Trial Court Proceedings
The court found that plaintiff’s mark was famous and likely being diluted by defendant’s use of the “teletech.com” domain name. Despite the court’s determination that plaintiff had not shown a likelihood of confusion, the court ultimately concluded that plaintiff was also likely to succeed on the merits of its infringement claim and issued a preliminary injunction barring defendant’s use of the “teletech.com” domain name and prohibiting defendant from interfering with plaintiff’s ability to register the domain name for itself.

The court did permit defendant to establish, for a limited period of time, a link from the “teletech.com” website to a website bearing the domain name “tele-tech.com” or another domain name at which defendant might choose to reestablish its website.

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