DomainMarket asks court to intervene after questionable UDRP.
Mike Mann’s company, DomainMarket, LLC, filed a lawsuit (pdf) after losing a UDRP for the domain name segurosmundial.com.
Compañía Mundial de Seguros SA, a Colombian insurance company that uses the domain name segurosmundial.com.co, filed the UDRP in March. A decision (pdf) in favor of the plaintiff was issued on May 23 but not sent to the parties until June 7. The lawsuit was filed on the 10th business day following, which is the deadline for suspending a UDRP decision.
DomainMarket, LLC is asking the court for a declaratory judgment stating that it did not register the domain in bad faith and that it is not cybersquatting. He is also asking for attorney’s fees.
Reading the UDRP, it looks like Mann has a case here. Based on the record of the published UDRP decision, I find it unlikely that Mann was aware of a Colombian design mark that does not appear to have been widely used at the time. Compañía Mundial de Seguros SA didn’t even register segurosmundial.com.co until two years after Mann registered the .com domain. It’s more likely that DomainMarket registered the domain because it’s made up of common Spanish words for “insurance” and “world.”
Regardless of merit, Colombian society will now have to defend itself in a Washington state court. It submitted to it when filing its UDRP.
Perkins Coie LLP represents DomainMarket. The law firm is familiar with the UDRP and cybersquatting law, although it generally defends trademark holders.
Comments are closed.