The UDRP Blog™

In LEGO Juris A/S v. Whoisguard Protected, Whoisguard, Inc. / Giovanni Bonny , WIPO Case No. D2017-0143 (Peter Wild, March 15, 2017), the Panel ordered the transfer of chineselego.com to the owner of the famous LEGO trademark. This was a case I could not resist blogging about, as my life just changed for the better this past week when my son wandered into a LEGO store at a local mall. He thought he was forcing me to buy LEGO bricks, but I may have been more excited about his "discovery" than he was. And I am glad to see that my money-for-bricks is being used to quash counterfeit enterprises. Well done LEGO! Reading this decision was almost as enjoyable as building my son's first LEGO kit. There is some great language in the decision for brand owners. To start, the Panel noted the significance of the fact that Complainant not only owns the LEGO mark and corresponding lego.com domain, but also owns "a large number of similar domain names." It is always wise to...

In Hershey Chocolate & Confectionery Corporation v. L. Roman T. Sorrells, PARI’ZA Studios , WIPO Case No. D2017-0128 (John C. McElwaine, March 31, 2017), the Panel ordered the transfer of hersheykyss.com to Complainant owner of the famous chocolate brand KISSES. This was actually a case I worked on when I had the privilege of serving as President and Counsel to Hershey Chocolate & Confectionery Corporation. I learned of this infringing domain name through a domain watch I had ordered to monitor domain names that potentially infringe on the HERSHEY'S and KISSES trademarks. We offer this type of domain watching service at my new firm, Alprin Law Offices , and I highly recommend it for anyone concerned about cybersquatting and/or typosquatting. A domain watch is an inexpensive way to monitor and protect one's valuable intellectual property from being infringed, which in the case of hersheykyss.com involved the association of famous trademarks to unsavory sexual content...

In JR Apparel World LLC v. Perfect Privacy, LLC / West Village LLC, WIPO Case No. D2017-0055 (Richard W. Page, February 22, 2017), the Panel transferred the domain membersonly.com to the owner of the federally registered trademark MEMBERS ONLY, despite the fact that the disputed domain was registered way back in 1997. In 1997, the Internet was just starting to gain popularity. The registration is thus very, very old, and made at a time when the Internet was somewhat of the wild west. But matter that did not, and the case serves as a reminder that it is never too late to go after a misappropriated domain. The concepts of latches and acquiescence have little place in uncontested UDRP proceedings. Complainant is owner of the mark MEMBERS ONLY, which the panel found to be famous, and which Complainant had used (through itself and its predecessor in interest) in connection with apparel products since 1975. But neither Complainant nor its predecessor seemed to have taken any acti...

  In Jazz Basketball Investors, Inc. v. WhoisguardProtected,Whoisguard, Inc. / Big Shen, Joan Bristol , WIPO Case No. D2017-0031 (Desmond J. Ryan, March 8, 2017), the Panel ordered the transfer of jazzbasketballteamshop.com to Complainant, the owner of the Utah Jazz professional basketball team. It was a fairly straightforward case where Respondent had about as much chance of retaining the domain name as the Washington Generals had of beating the Harlem Globetrotters through history (random basketball history fact: the Generals only won once against the Globetrotters, due to an accidental time clock error, after losing 2,495 straight games). For this reason, Respondent didn’t even show up for the game (it defaulted). Complainant swooshed a three pointer in this one, satisfying all three factors necessary to prevail in a UDRP complaint. First, it easily demonstrated that the disputed domain name was confusingly similar to a trademark in which Complainant had ...