Respond to UDRP but still wins — Google doesn’t
Social media firm files silly cybersquatting complaint against Google and loses despite no response.
Social Status, Inc. filed a cybersquatting complaint under UDRP against Google over the domain name SocialStatus.com. Google prevailed even though it didn’t bother to respond to the dispute.
Google is the second sizable firm to win a UDRP despite not filing a response in the past couple weeks. WebMD.com won a case over IVI.com without a response.
In the SocialStatus.com case, the complainant was way out of line. It admitted that Google didn’t register the domain in bad faith. But the panelist didn’t even get that far: he found that Social Status didn’t show it had trademark rights in the name. That was easy since the complainant based its claim on filing for a trademark.
I really hope Social Status, Inc. wasn’t represented by a lawyer.
Social Status, Inc. uses the matching .io domain name. Google got the domain name when it purchased Slide in 2010.
Google has responded to UDRPs in the past, so I’m curious why it didn’t respond to this case and why WebMD didn’t respond to its case. Surely they are getting notice? Have they just decided they’ll win these cases without responding, or that they can always file a lawsuit to block the transfer?
