Owners win UDRPs despite not responding — Two domain
Panelists don’t blindly assume respondents are cybersquatting in two recent cases.
Although it’s rare, domain name owners sometimes win UDRP filings despite not responding to the allegations. In these cases, the UDRP panelists actually use critical thinking on the merits of the case to make sure the complainant has met its burden. They don’t assume that a lack of response proves that the domain owner is a cybersquatter.
Domain owners won two recent cases despite not responding to the complaints:
The first case involved CDN giant CloudFlare, which went following the domain name CloudFare.com. In this case, panelist David A. Einhorn noted that the respondent registered the domain name in 2009, prior to CloudFlare’s stated date of use in 2010. Thus, it wasn’t registered in bad faith.
The second case was filed by Allglass Confort Systems, S.L. of Spain against the domain name todocristal.com. Todo Cristal translates to “all glass”, and the complainant uses the domain name allglasstodocristal.com.
The complainant has trademarks for a design mark for “Todocristal Allglass”. But panelist Pablo A. Palazzi pointed out that Todocristal.com is descriptive of the complainant’s business and is generic in nature. Therefore, the complainant didn’t prove it was registered in bad faith. Although Palazzi didn’t come to a determination on rights and legitimate interests, he expressed reservations on this topic due to the generic nature of the domain.
