UDRP Case Summaries

UDRP (Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy) was established and adopted at ICANN’s inception as a dispute resolution policy to resolve disputes between trademark holders and domain owners more quickly and cost-effectively than judicial litigation.

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Intentionality and Trademark Infringement – vol. 4.43

October 29, 2024
Intentionality and Trademark Infringement Can a Respondent’s belief that a Complainant abandoned its trademark, combined with due diligence, vitiate a claim of bad faith registration? Yes, as the Panel found in this case. Here, the Respondent provided an apparently credible explanation of the reasons that it believed that it had the right to register and use the Domain Name. The

Policy Requires That Bad Faith Must Target ‘Complainant, Specifically’, Not Unrelated Third Parties – vol. 4.42

October 22, 2024
Policy Requires That Bad Faith Must Target ‘Complainant, Specifically’, Not Unrelated Third Parties We sometimes see Respondent’s misapprehend what a “generic” or “descriptive” term is. Here, the Respondent argued that the Disputed Domain Name “consists of two generic terms, ‘cyber’ and ‘nautic’, however as the Panel pointed out, this “does not establish that the combined term, “cybernautic,” is generic or

Free Speech/Criticism as Legitimate Interest – vol. 4.41

October 15, 2024
Free Speech/Criticism as Legitimate Interest The 3-member Forum Panel in  <veatchcarlson. com>  denied the complaint and found that the Respondent has a legitimate interest in using the disputed domain name for criticizing the Complainant.  The issue of free speech/criticism remains one of the grey areas in UDRP jurisprudence. Continue reading the commentary here.  Register today for the CIIDRC’s Domain Disputes

Complainant Fails to Prove Prior Trademark Rights – vol. 4.40

October 8, 2024
Complainant Fails to Prove Prior Trademark Rights The Panel was of course, correct that a trademark right must predate the disputed domain name for there to be bad faith registration. As noted in UDRP Perspectives at 3.2, for bad faith registration to have occurred, the trademark must predate the Respondent’s domain name registration. UDRP Panels routinely determine that a domain

Armoured Vehicle Business Dispute Involving Competing Trademark Registrations – vol. 4.39

October 2, 2024
Armoured Vehicle Business Dispute Involving Competing Trademark Registrations You will note that the Panel stated that “the Respondent in this case did not request a finding of RDNH, but such a finding seems appropriate in the circumstances”. This approach fulfils the Panel’s obligation to consider whether a Complaint is abusive in every case that warrants such consideration, regardless of whether

Panel: Respondent’s Prerogative to Seek Any Price it Wishes for a Generic-Word Domain Name – vol 4.38

September 25, 2024
Panel: Respondent’s Prerogative to Seek Any Price it Wishes for a Generic-Word Domain Name Although the Panel ultimately rejected the claim for RDNH, the Panel did consider it – as is its duty to under the Rules where the facts so warrant, as was the case here. RDNH is a discretionary remedy and Panels have significant latitude in accepting or

Does Res Judicata Apply to Refiled UDRP Complaints? – vol. 4.37

September 17, 2024
Does Res Judicata Apply to Refiled UDRP Complaints? Looking back at the original case, the Complainant’s arguments (as summarized in the second decision) do not seem to quite match what transpired there. The US trademark registration application was filed on the same day that the complainant’s domain name was registered, January 23, 2019.  The Complainant’s trademark registration application was filed

Panel: Respondent’s Counsel “Wasted Everyone’s Time by Defending the Indefensible” – vol. 4.36

September 10, 2024
“System Critical Updates Available” by Mr. Sten Lillieström It is not uncommon to believe that language is merely a set of arbitrary units that we learn by rote. That is perhaps the legacy view and the common idea. But at the heart of modern Linguistics are hard, unresolved questions about what is actually going on under the hood. And the

How to Assess the History of MinuteMen(.com) – vol 4.35

September 4, 2024
An update to UDRP Perspectives was released on August 30th.  This version offers entirely new perspectives on Personal Names (1.9) and on Prior Business Relationships (3.9), as well as revised and expanded Perspectives on And not Or (3.1) and on Setting a Price and Offering for Sale (3.5).  This version also includes the addition of many recently published decisions and UDRP

Nominative Fair Use – Favoring a Holistic Approach to the OKI Data Test – vol. 4.34

August 27, 2024
Nominative Fair Use – Favoring a Holistic Approach to the OKI Data Test This decision is one of a number of recent cases that have looked beyond the binary questions of items two and three of the venerable Oki Data test, i.e., whether a respondent’s website sells only the trademarked goods or services and not those of a complainant’s competitors