Reliance Telecom Limited of Mumbai, just lost a UDRP on the domain name RelianceGroup.com which was registered on September 21, 1997.
The domain holder did not respond to the UDRP but won any way.
Here are the relevant facts and findings by the one member panel:
Reliance uses the domain name relianceadagroup.com for its main website but owns some 500 domain names with the word Reliance in the domain.
The Complainant is an Indian corporation with its principal office in Mumbai, India.
The Complainant was founded in 1994 and is part of a wider group of Indian companies founded by Dhirubhai H Ambani, known as the Reliance Group.
Starting in the 1970s with Reliance Textiles, Mr. Ambani formed a group of companies which share the use of the word “Reliance”, including the Complainant, Reliance Capital, Reliance Communications, Reliance Entertainment and Reliance Power. According to the Complaint, the group of companies that are commonly referred to as the Reliance Group
The Complainant or related companies that are part of the Reliance Group have held trade mark registrations for RELIANCE (the “RELIANCE Mark”) both in India and internationally, including the United States, Canada, and the European Union. The RELIANCE Mark has been registered in India by the Complainant since as early as December 1999.
The Domain Name redirects to a website (“Respondent’s Website”) that appears to be a parking page maintained by the Registrar, which, when visited by the Panel on or around October 4, 2013, contained advertisements for financial services products that appear to be unrelated to the Complainant.
The Domain Name has been registered for almost 16 years. “The longer the time a disputed domain name has been registered, the more difficult it is for a complainant to prove bad faith registration”. AVN Media Network, Inc. v. Hossam Shaltout, WIPO Case No. D2007-1011.
There was no explanation for Complainant’s delay in filing a complaint about the Domain Name.
Although the Panel’s decision in this case does not rest simply on the passage of time between registration of the Domain Name and Complainant’s assertion of its rights, it is a fact that the Panel cannot ignore.
There is no evidence that the Respondent has engaged in a pattern of conduct of registering domain names (including the Domain Name) to prevent trade mark owners from registering a corresponding domain name.
There is no evidence that the Respondent has ever registered a domain name other than the Domain Name.…
