The Lost Dogs Home Ltd of Melbourne, Australia, just lost a UDRP on the domain name lostdogshome.com to a domain holder that represented himself in the proceeding.
“The Complainant is one of Australia’s largest animal welfare organisations and has operated since 1910 under the trade mark THE LOST DOGS HOME. It operates six animal shelters in Australia, caring for over 31,000 dogs and cats each year, and manages a significant National Pet Register. The Respondent is an animal rights activist who is critical of the work of the Complainant. He operates a website under the disputed domain name that criticizes the work of the Complainant and encourages the Complainant to adopt management practices that he regards as more humane.:
Here are the relevant findings from the one member panel:
“In this case there can be no doubt that the disputed domain name has been adopted to attract potential customers and supporters of the Complainant’s business. The core question, therefore, is whether the use of a disputed domain name that is identical or confusingly similar to a trade mark, by a party who is not a competitor of the owner of the mark, for the operation of a criticism site, where the nature of the site is not apparent from the disputed domain name itself, can give rise to rights or legitimate interests in the disputed domain name.”
“The WIPO Overview of WIPO Panel Views on Selected UDRP Questions, Second Edition (“WIPO Overview 2.0″) makes it clear that there are two main views on this issue to be found in Panel decisions. ”
“The first view is that: “[t]he right to criticize does not necessarily extend to registering and using a domain name that is identical or confusingly similar to the complainant’s trademark. That is especially the case if the respondent is using the trademark alone as the domain name (i.e., <trademark.tld>) as that may be understood by Internet users as impersonating the trademark owner.”
“The second view, which has been favoured by US Panels, is that “Irrespective of whether the domain name as such connotes criticism, the respondent has a legitimate interest in using the trademark as part of the domain name of a criticism site if such use is fair and noncommercial.”
“This is a case that rests on the precise point of divergence between these two views. On the one hand, it is a case in which the Respondent is using almost the exact trade mark as the disputed domain name.…