A one member UDRP panel refused to allow BuyDomains.com to unilateral consent to transfer the Domain Name Shiseido.net to the Complainant, Shiseido Company of Tokyo, Japan, and went ahead and issued its opinion ordering the transfer of the domain.
BuyDomains.com tried to agree to the consent to transfer while still maintaining that its did not register the domain name in bad faith.
The panel took that ball and ran, saying due to that statement the panel had a duty to issue an opinion.
Its a good discussion on how not to attempt to avoid a UDRP ruling if your willing to give up the domain
Here are the relevant facts and finding of the one member panel:
The Complainant is a globally operating company offering cosmetics, toiletries and beauty products.
The Complainant owns the SHISEIDO trademark, which is registered in numerous countries worldwide, among others as:
- United States trademark registration SHISEIDO (stylized) no. 686,446, registered on October 6, 1959;
-The Complainant is also the owner of numerous domain names including , and .
According to the WhoIs excerpt provided in Annex 1 to the Complaint, the Domain Name was registered on April 27, 2005. Almost all trademarks cited or referred to by the Complainant in its favor predate the registration of the Domain Name.
In the past six years, five decisions in UDRP proceedings have been issued against the Respondent.
The Respondent agrees to the relief requested by the Complainant and offers its unilateral consent to transfer the Domain Name to the Complainant.
The Respondent submitted a sworn affidavit, containing the following contentions:
- “We register domain names that become eligible for registration through expiration and deletion. We effort to register and use only those domain names that are comprised of descriptive or generic English and non-English words, phrases, terms, geographic identifiers, and/or combinations of the same. (* To that end, the word “Shiseido” “comes from Chinese Yi Jing, the Book of Changes from the Four Books and Five Classics of Confucianism…” available at: http://group.shiseido.com/company/past/company-name/ (last visited on October 22, 2013).
- We did not register the Disputed Domain for the purpose of selling it to Complainant. We did not register the Disputed Domain name with Complainant’s trademark in mind. We did not register the Disputed Domain name with the intent to disrupt Complainant’s business, to keep Complainant from having a domain name that includes their trademark or register it to confuse customers seeking to find Complainant’s numerous website(s).…
