Loses Case for RPP.com — Peruvian Broadcaster

Broadcast firm can’t have three letter domain name, panel rules.

Peru broadcast firm GRUPORPP S.A., which has an online news portal at rpp.com.pe, has lost an arbitration case in which it fought for the domain name RPP.com.

As stated by the panel decision the firm managed to get a trademark for RPP.com in Peru back in 2001, which is quite scary given that it didn’t own the domain name.

Although the firm has been around since 1963, it didn’t say whether or not it was using the mark rpp.com back in 1996 when the domain name was registered. The panel inferred that it hadn’t used it until 2001 when it filed for the mark since it was provided with no evidence of use.

With that in mind, the panel determined that the domain name wasn’t registered in bad faith since it was registered prior to the first known use of the trademark.

Still, the complainant may have made a mistake here. Although the domain was registered in 1996, the current registrant didn’t get the domain name until following the RPP.com mark was registered in 2001. So the complainant ought to have argued the domain was registered following the mark was. (I still believe this is a bogus filing and the respondent ought to have won. I’m just pointing out an error by the complainant.)