Fun Friday afternoon topic: domain name disputes

[mirod]

Jason Clifford wrote:
> On Fri, 2010-02-05 at 14:29 +0100, mirod wrote:
>> My friend owns the trademark for the name in Europe, the US and Asia. It is a
>> very distinct name and a Google search on the name returns only hits related to
>> her product.
>>
>> So it looks like a clear case of cyber-squatting to me.
> 
> It might be. It depends upon whether the domain name was registered in
> bad faith (see http://www.icann.org/en/udrp/udrp-policy-24oct99.htm for
> details) or not.



> Do bear in mind that Trademark protects a name in relation to a specific
> market segment and is not universal so if the current registrant was
> using the name in connection with some other market segment or not
> commercially and specifically in a manner not likely to cause confusion
> as to who was using it your friend might not have a right to try and
> take the domain via a DRP.

It appears that her brand is unique, which is lucky for a 4 letter word!
The weird thing though is that whois tells me that the record was created 6 
years ago. That seems a long time for someone to sit on a useless domain name.

>> I am not sure what she can do about it though. It seems like the only solution
>> is to go to court, and there have been very few cases that went to trial.
> 
> Perhaps the registry operator the domain was registered through (as
> shown in the whois record) operates a dispute resolution service
> although many of them effectively don't.
> 
> WIPO is an option for a dispute on a .com domain but it will be
> expensive and slow. It's really designed to accommodate the needs and
> desires of larger companies.
> 
> If the person who has registered the domain is based in the UK taking
> them to court over the matter should not be too hard. If they are
> elsewhere you might well have to bring action in a US court which will
> be expensive.

The registrar is moniker.com. From a quick look at their website, they seem to 
be very much in the business of providing a market place for domain names. And 
their dispute policy, although quite long, seems to boil down to require the 
involvement of WIPO :--(

The registrant is based in the UK, but my friend is in Italy.

-- 
mirod