It’s obvious that World2Work is overreaching, but they believe they are making a good faith claim. Yet, there are two major flaws in their argument. First, simply registering a domain and not using it is NOT a valid argument towards bad faith; this has been shown in previous UDRP decisions. Second is the fact that Fired.com was registered long before the plaintiff’s claimed usage of “Fired”.

What’s interesting here is that Trump would have the best claim against Fired.com. Archive.org has saved screen shots of the original parking page from 2007 that shows competing ads for Trumps Apprentice show. This, in itself, could be used as a claim of confusion with the “You’re Fired” marks from the show which are owned by JMBP, Inc..

These guys are a page rank 3. It is hard to imagine they have much traffic.

Kurt has had the domain since at least 2001. Complainant’s first use in commerce is 2004, well after Kurt purchased the domain. He should win on this basis alone and obtain a reverse hijacking decision.

UDRP cases are not referenced when making a claim against a Federal trademark; unless the UDRP case itself made references to Federal cases in their decision. Still, a Federal lawsuit would need to be brought against the trademark owner in order to cancel the mark. Only a Federal judge has the power to cancel a mark once it has been granted.

Here, the best opportunity and least expensive route would have been to file a letter of protest when the mark “Fired” was original published for opposition. Once a mark is granted it’s much more difficult to get a trademark canceled.

In business v. business state or Federal court, attorneys fees and damages are not guaranteed if you win. You need to show a willful malicious intent by the other party to to deceive or abuse the system. In reality, that is a high hurdle to clear; especially if the other party can show a legal precedent for their argument. That goes a long way towards a good faith claim.

In this case the plaintiff has their own high hurdles to overcome. This is why they are going the route of UDRP first, it’s less costly to them than Federal court which would cost 50-100k at a minimum with no guarantees.

Another note: when filing or responding to a UDRP, always use a lawyer that specializes in domain name law.