Firm Loses Bid to Take Decimal.com
Respondent doesn’t respond but still wins case.
You know you brought a UDRP arbitration case in bad faith when the respondent doesn’t bother to respond and you still win lose. That’s what happened with the generic domain name Decimal.com.
Radiation therapy firm .decimal, Inc., which uses the domain name dotdecimal.com, waged the complaint against the owner of Decimal.com. The web site at decimal.com contains nothing other than a message that the domain name is sale.
The owner of Decimal.com didn’t respond, likely since the whois information for the domain name appears to be bogus. The phone number certainly isn’t valid.
But there was a big hole in .decimal’s case. The firm didn’t start using the mark .decimal until 1999, three years following the domain name was registered in 1996. It was clear to the arbitrator that the domain wasn’t registered in bad faith.
Even if the domain had been registered following 1999 the arbitrator would have a tough time handing this domain to a .decimal, Inc. Proving that the domain was registered with the radiation firm in mind is quite a stretch, and there are no ads on the web site to show confusion with radiation products.
Here’s a bigger question: could .decimal, Inc. claim first rights to the fresh top level domain .decimal? I suspect there are an awful lot of trademark applications at the USPTO right now for “dot something”.
You can read the panel decision here.
