Wafu Inc. of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, was just awarded the rights to the domain name WAFU.com a domain that was registered on March 8, 2000.
The Complainant owns some trademarks in Cananda the one’s cited by the panel are dated June 23, 2008 another dated November 17, 2003.
However “The Complainant contends that the registration date of the disputed domain name is March 8, 2000, nearly one year after the use of the Complainant’s mark; the Respondent therefore, does not have any rights or legitimate interests with respect to the disputed domain name. ”
So although the trademarks by the panel own citations were not registered until 2003 and 2008 they seemed to accept the Complainant Assertions that it begain using the trademarks in 1998.
The domain holder did not respond and that fact coupled with the domain name not resolving doomed the UDRP.
“The Complainant also avers that the website located at the address associated with the disputed domain name does not appear to be active, thus, the Respondent has no rights or legitimate interests to keep the registration of the disputed domain name. The Complainant consequently submits that to the best of its knowledge, the Respondent is not commonly known by the disputed domain name and makes no legitimate commercial use of the said website.”
“The Panel finds that on the record, it has been established that the Respondent has not been commonly known by the disputed domain name, and thus the Panel does not recognize that the Respondent has rights or legitimate interests in the disputed domain name. ”
“Under the circumstance that the Respondent did not reply, the Panel finds that the Complainant has proven a prima facie case that the Respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in the disputed domain name. See De Agostini S.p.A. v. Marco Cialone, WIPO Case No. DTV2002-0005; see also Accor v. Eren Atesmen, WIPO Case No. D2009-0701.
Given the above circumstances, the Panel concludes that the Respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in the disputed domain name, and the second element of the Policy has been established.
“The Panel reviews as to whether the Complainant has proved the additional requirement that the disputed domain name “is being used in bad faith” by the Respondent. The Complainant asserts that after numerous attempts by the Complainant to communicate with the Respondent, the Complainant never received any reply with regards to the justification of the registration of the disputed domain name.…
