The UDRP Blog™

Where the powers that be at Dayton Daily News determined to spend some subscription fees and go after a typosquatter In Cox Newspapers, Inc. d/b/a Dayton Daily News v. PabloPalermao , WIPO Case No. D2008-0372 (Joan Clark, May 19, 2008), the Panel required the transfer of daytondailynew .com to the owner of the registered trademark DAYTON DAILY NEWS. In finding the Respondent's domain confusingly similar to the Complainant's registered trademark, the Panel made clear that the mere deletion of a letter from the Complainant's mark did not obviate confusing similarity: "The removal of the letter 's' is so minor, at the very end of the principal part of the domain name, that it would not prevent the likelihood of confusion between the Complainant’s mark and the disputed domain name." In discussing bad faith, the Panel emphasized that the omission of a letter from the Complainant's trademark evidenced the Respondent's bad faith: "The choice of the...

In Georgia Power Company, the Southern Company v. Wang Congming , WIPO Case No. D2008-0234 (David Taylor, April 16, 2008), the Panel required the transfer of gerogiapower.com to the Complainant. Aside from the addition of the top level domain (.com) and the inversion of the "o" and "r" in "Georgia," the domain name was identical to the Complainant's registered GEORGIA POWER trademark. The case is a classic example of typosquatting, where domain profiteers seek to capture on typing mistakes made by Internet surfers seeking a particular website. In this case, the Panel found that "[t]he misspelling of the GEORGIA POWER mark in the domain name is with intent to intercept and siphon off traffic from its intended destination and direct them to the Respondent’s website." This conclusion was easy for the Panel, as "[t]he website under the disputed domain name contains links to 'Georgia Power', 'Georgia Power New Service', 'O...