by Bridget McCrea
Inman News Features
Can a company that is not a real estate industry-controlled multiple listing service use the letters MLS in its corporate and Web domain names? That’s the issue being litigated in a New York trade name lawsuit, Staten Island Board of REALTORS® v. Staten IslandMLS.com.
The Staten Island Board of REALTORS® initially prevailed in the case against American-MLS.com and its subsidiary StatenIslandMLS.com. But the losing party appealed the case, thus staying an injunction and sending the dispute to the appellate division for another look.
American-MLS.com allows homeowners to advertise their homes on its Web sites for a one-time fee of $795 for a year, according to a June 1 statement about the lawsuit. The company claims to have registered more than 220 MLS domain names for every state and major city in the United States.
And the StatenIslandMLS.com subsidiary touts itself as “the first national commission-free Multiple Listing Service open to the public.”
But Sandy Kruger, CEO of the REALTORS’® group, said American-MLS.com is misleading the public into thinking it’s an MLS, when it’s really not one.
“They put homes on a Web site for a small fee, but it’s not an MLS that shares information among brokers,” said Kruger. “It’s basically a for-sale-by-owner Web site.”
Kruger said there are no precedents for the trade name case and that while the terms “MLS” and “Staten Island” can’t be separately trademarked, together they “mean something” and as such, deserve trademark protection.
“SIBOR and the Staten Island Multiple Listing Service have spent millions of dollars building a reputation for that combined name, which people understand to be a true MLS,” Kruger said.
“The example used in court was ‘New York’ and ‘Yankees,’” Kruger added. “You can’t trademark the two separately, but ‘New York Yankees’ means something.”
American-MLS.com CEO Darren J. Smith declined to comment on the case.
The National Association of REALTORS® is contributing one-third of the costs up to $8,400 of defending the lower court’s ruling on appeal.