Wants a Bite Out Of Peaches.com — Peaches Uniforms
Uniform firm files arbitration to get Peaches.com domain.
Peaches.com would
be sweeter.
Peaches Uniforms, a seller of fashion uniforms and scrubs to women in the medical industry, has filed an arbitration request with National Arbitration Forum to gain control of the domain name Peaches.com.
Peaches Uniforms, founded in 1987, filed for a trademark on the term Peaches for medical uniforms in 2006. The trademark was granted in April 2007.
Peaches.com was originally registered in 1995. The current owner, 24-7 Outdoors, Inc., has owned the domain since at least 2003, the earliest date historical whois records are available on DomainTools. At the time, the domain was registered to The Peach Connection and 24-7 Outdoors.
Earlier this year, Peaches.com forwarded to a parking page with ads for medical uniforms. Since at least October it has forwarded to web pages not related to medical uniforms.
Peaches Uniforms will have to jump two big hurdles if it has any hopes of winning this battle.
First, the domain was registered a number of years prior to Peaches Uniforms even registering its current domain PeachesUniforms.com and more than a decade ahead of the firm filed for a trademark on “Peaches”. Proving a bad faith registration will be challenging. At the time the domain was registered, is it likely that the registrant knew of Peaches Uniforms and bought the domain with the firm in mind? With such a generic term and the firm being in a modest niche, this will be a tough sell to the panel.
Second, Peaches Uniforms has had a web presence for a long time. Why wait until the last month of 2008 to filed a UDRP to get the domain Peaches.com? Surely the firm has been aware of the existence of peaches.com for a long time. A UDRP arbitration panel will sometimes find against a complainant’s claim that there was confusion between the domain and its brand if it takes too long to file a UDRP.. For example, in a case regarding CapitolCorridor.com, the panel wrote “Complainant also contends that it only recently learned of the existence of capitolcorridor.com as a reason for its six-year delay in asserting its rights. The Panel gives this unsupported assertion little weight, as it is difficult to believe that the owners of capitolcorridor.org could reasonably remain unaware of the existence of capitolcorridor.com for over six years.”
I don’t have more details regarding the ins and outs of the case, but I’ll anxiously await the decision and post a follow up when it is handed down.
