Did you know that Canadian Tire owns the rights to Crappy Tire online? It’s true.
Back in 2001 the retailer filed a grievance against a man from London, Ontario who had bought the URL crappytire.com and was planning on turning it into a website where he would complain about their pricing and other aspects of their business.
While he said he planned to turn it into an outlet, Mick McFadden had the URL listed for sale at $85,000 if anybody wanted to buy it.
Canadian Tire argued that since "Crappy Tire" was used colloquially in place of their actual business name, they should have the rights to it for free.
Squatting on domain names was a common practice during the early days of the internet, and the the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was often used to settle disputes involving brands.
Ultimately the WIPO board ruled in favour of McFadden in this case, as they didn't think "Crappy Tire" was the retailer's intellectual property.
However the next year they quietly bought the URL off of McFadden, as well as picking up crappytire.net and crappytire.ca.
I’ve tried to get a hold of McFadden to find out how much they paid him, but so far my efforts have been unsuccessful. Perhaps he’s living off the grid on a tropical island, still counting all that Crappy Tire money more than 20 years later.
