Universal Assistance S.A. of Buenos Aires, Argentina, just won a UDRP against Mike Mann’s Domain Asset Holdings, LLC on the domain name UniversalAssistance.com
The Complainant had a trademark on the term, Universal Assistance since 1974 but the panel seemed to be willing to give them a common law right to the term even if they didn’t have the trademark.
The company official site was universal-assistance.com which they registered in 2004.
Mike company registered the domain subject to the UDRP in 2007.
The panel didn’t like the parking links on the domain, the fact that Mike quoted the Complainant a price of $50,000 to buy the domain and held several other UDRP losses against Domain Asset Holdings.
Here are the relevant facts and findings by the one member panel:
The Complainant is a company incorporated in Argentina in 1980, providing travel health insurance in and outside Argentina. According to the Complainant, the company is operational in 150 countries and provides insurance to over 10 million people a year. It has trade mark registrations in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Nicaragua and Colombia, with the oldest registration dating back to 1994. The Complainant registered the domain name <universal-assistance.com> in 2004.
The Respondent is a company based in the USA and is in the business of owning, developing and selling domain names.
It registered the Disputed Domain Name on December 9, 2007.
“Despite the Respondent’s contention that “Universal Assistance” is a generic or descriptive term and cannot be registered, the Panel finds that the Complainant has rights in respect of the UNIVERSAL ASSISTANCE trade mark on the basis of its various registrations in South America, with the oldest registration dating back to 1994″.
“Even if the Complainant was found not to have a valid trade mark registration for the UNIVERSAL ASSISTANCE trade mark, it is well-established that marks which may be generic or descriptive, but have gained a certain distinctiveness through use, should be considered a trade mark or service mark in which a Complainant has rights for purposes of the Policy.
“In its Supplementary Response, the Respondent produced a number of WhoIs records to illustrate that the hyperlinks on the website of the Disputed Domain Name belong to the Respondent, and that the Disputed Domain Name is used to advertise the Respondent’s goods and services. I
“n the Panel’s opinion, the evidence provided by the Respondent is of low probative value and therefore insufficient to overcome a prima facie finding of no rights or legitimate interests in the spirit of paragraph 4(c)(i) of the Policy.”
“Furthermore, this appears to be a mere display of hyperlinks, which although may lead to websites that are owned by the Respondent, establish no connection to the Disputed Domain Name or a name corresponding to the Disputed Domain Name such that would support a finding of a right or legitimate interest in the Disputed Domain Name.”
“The purported use of the website to which the Disputed Domain Name directs fails to show any monetary or intellectual investment that would support the Respondent’s submission that the website was used for a bone fide offering of goods or services.…