UDRP over four letter Kols.com domain name — Kohls loses

KOLS.com was registered three years ahead of Kohls.com.

Retailer Kohls.com has lost a UDRP dispute for the domain name Kols.com, which it claimed was a typo of its domain name Kohls.com.

The respondent, Fox Business Systems / KansasNet, stated it registered the domain name as an acronym for “Kansas Online Systems” and had intended to develop it. It hired a number of developers over the years but none of them completed the project. One of those developers parked the domain while working on it, which resulted in a parked page for regarding a year in the domain’s long history.

But it’s the domain’s history that I think is interesting here. The registrant registered the domain name in 1995. That was three years ahead of Kohls got around to registering Kohls.com. So Kohl’s argument that the respondent registered the domain for typosquatting to take advantage of mistyped traffic to Kohls.com rings hollow. Following all, if you wanted to snag Kohl’s traffic wouldn’t you just register Kohls.com instead?

The panelist found that the respondent had rights or legitimate interests in the domain.

Kohls was represented by typosquatting recovery firm CitizenHawk.