Category Archive

Failure to Amend Basis for Complaint Upon Revelation of Whois Details, is RDNH This case raises two particularly interesting issues. The first is whether a party that registers a domain name in good faith pursuant to an intellectual property rights policy can later be found to have registered the domain name in bad faith. The second particularly interesting issue that …

Food for Thought: 26-Year-Old Domain Name Transferred Mere Possibility of Infringement Is Not Bad Faith… with the caveat that we are not privy to all of the information contained within the complaint, the FoodClub.com UDRP decision raises some important issues which in my opinion, should have led to a different decision… continue reading. We hope you will enjoy this edition …

SMARTCONTRACTS .COM Confusingly Similar to SMARTCON? The Respondent is identified as “Expiry Assignment Service / Afternic, LLC – On Behalf of Domain Owner”. Afternic is GoDaddy’s aftermarket and auction business unit. This profile indicates that the disputed Domain Name’s registration expired, and it is in the post-expiration auction pipeline. According to GoDaddy, an expired domain name is removed from the …

Complainant Stumbles on Creation Date vs. Registration Date, and RDNH Found This was tough luck for the Complainant but as the Panel noted, “the Complainant has not attempted to deal with the basic problem that the disputed Domain Name was first registered some three years before the Complainant was founded”. The Domain Name was created in 1995 – before the …

Six Times Unlucky: Spanish Government Agency Fails Again to “Protect” Alhambra Monument What this case ultimately came down to, was the Complainant’s conflation of the reputation of the monument itself, with the Complainant’s trademark. As the Panel observed, “there is nothing before the Panel that suggests that the Complainant would be entitled to conflate such notoriety and goodwill as it …

Law Firm Whose Client Escaped RDNH Last Time, Not as Lucky This Time Readers may recall the PitStop case from Digest Vol. 4.12 last month. In commenting upon the decision, I questioned whether the Panel was justified in declining to find RDNH. In that case, I pointed out that the Complainant, represented by a Brazilian law firm, proceeded headlong despite …

Panel: Privacy Services are a Standard Feature of Contemporary Domain Name Registrations This case should finally put to rest the “Whois Privacy is evidence of bad faith” argument which continues to raised by both counsel and Panelists despite it being a relic from days gone by. As noted by the Panel, Whois privacy is a standard feature these days, either …

Complainant’s ‘Sincere Belief’ Runs Contrary to Policy But Saves it from RDNH The denial of RDNH in this case, is frankly difficult to comprehend. On the facts as presented in the decision, this indeed seems to be amongst the very clearest of RDNH cases. First, the Respondent had an overt and clearly legitimate interest in the Domain Name… continue reading …