Cohen loses cybersquatting case over impersonation website — Abby Joseph

Prominent economist and former Goldman Sachs partner lost dispute over common law trademark claim.

No, famed economist Abby Joseph Cohen is not opening her own financial advisory firm.

But you might think that if you visit AbbyJosephCohenAdvisory[.]com.

Someone registered the domain on March 3 and set up a website purporting to offer services by the Columbia Business School professor and former Goldman Sachs Chief U.S. Investment Strategist.

Alarmed by the impersonation, Cohen filed a cybersquatting claim under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).

While it’s clear that the registrant is cybersquatting, she still needed to demonstrate that she has trademark rights (either common law or registered) in her name.

But the UDRP panelist, David Sorkin, noted:

[Cohen] here has offered no evidence to support the claim of common law rights apart from a bare assertion that she is “a prominent figure in the finance industry.” Such a conclusory allegation is insufficient to demonstrate rights in a mark.

The case is similar to one Cohen won last month in which panelist Richard Hill found that she did have common law trademark rights in her name.

Referring to that case, Sorkin wrote:

It is unclear what evidence supporting the claim of common law rights was presented to the panel in Abby Joseph Cohen v. Adorno Garcia, supra (referring without elaboration to “evidence that [Complainant’s] name has achieved widespread recognition in connection with financial services”), but in any case this Panel is not bound by that decision.

Assuming Cohen’s lawyer, Stephen J. Elliott of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, submitted the same arguments, he is probably scratching his head.

But there can be nuance in UDRP disputes, as Elliott discovered following filing cases to recover domains that might have been registered to impersonate Sullivan & Cromwell.