WIPO Rules Against a Trademark Holder
In what is clearly an exceptional yet not completely unique type of case, the WIPO has ruled against a legitimate trademark holder in a domain dispute. Runway Beauty Inc. filed a complaint against Errol Hernandez, who registered and parked runwaymagazine.com, runwaymagazine.net, and runwaymagazine.org. The website opens to a portal stating that it will be a social site about fashion and beauty but with no other content as of yet.
The complainant, Runway Beauty, has a website called runwaymagazine.us and offers an international print magazine about fashion, beauty, and entertainment. They own the U.S. trademark Runway Magazine, registered in 2008. The respondent first registered the disputed domains back in 1999. He intended to make a website, but never found the time or resources. In 2008, when he received complaints from Runway Beauty Inc., he began creating a website.
The panel acknowledged the first two conditions of UDRP: that the disputed domains are confusingly similar to trademarks held by the complainant and that the respondent had no legitimate business interests or rights in the domain. On the third crucial point, however, the panel did not believe Hernandez had registered the domains in bad faith. He registered the domains long before Runway Beauty even existed and always intended to make a legitimate non-commercial website.
Tag: dispute, domain, trademark, u.s., website, wipo
Nokia Rescues Ovistore.com
Mobile telecommunications giant Nokia filed a complaint with the National Arbitration Forum over the domain ovistore.com. The respondent in the case was Nehra Corp. Nokia owns the trademark OVI, and their application store website address is store.ovi.com. Like many other cybersquatting cases, the respondent used ovistore.com to display a website with ads and links to Nokia competitors.
Nehra Corp. did not respond the complaint, apparently being satisfied with the temporary profit machine. The panel found that they had violated all three of the requirements for judgment: that the domain name was confusingly similar to a legal trademark, that the respondent had no legitimate usage rights of the domain, and that the respondent registered the domain in bad faith. The panel ruled in favor of Nokia.
Nokia is one of the world’s leading vendors of mobile devices and apparently intends to use OVI Store to compete with Apple’s iPhone app store. As of now ovistore.com points to a “site is not currently available” message. As with nearly all of these cases, it is not clear whether Nokia will pursue any legal action or if simply losing the domain is incentive enough for cybersquatters to stop their money-making schemes.
Source: National Arbitration Forum
Photo: Flickr
Tag: cybersquatting, dispute, domain, nokia, website
SCOPE rinses away cybersquatter
The Proctor and Gamble Company (PG), responsible for products such as Tide detergent, Pampers diapers, and Scope mouthwash, recently filed a domain dispute with Richard Jones, a man who registered scopemouthwash.com and used it for his search portal of miscellaneous advertisements available in multiple languages. PG owns pg.com as well as a website for Scope called getclose.com.
Jones did not respond to the dispute and therefore left it completely up to arbitration panel to decide the outcome, which was pretty much an open and close case. SCOPE is a registered trademark of Proctor and Gamble, which I am sure Jones very well knew. It was also clear that Jones registered the domain in bad faith with the sole intent of profiting from the trademark through random ads.
As with all of the cases like this one, it left me wondering what type of income people like Jones receive before they lose the domains. Cybersquatting continues to be a problem for many website owners, including large corporations with significant interest in protecting their trademarks. According to ICANN policy, the panel ordered the registrar to transfer the domain to Proctor and Gamble.
Source: UDRPsearch
Tag: dispute, domain, registrar, trademark, website