RAI.mobi Owner Needs to Put a Foot in His Mouth
Monday, February 2nd, 2009
RAI.mobi domain owner did himself a disservice in responding to UDRP.
It’s difficult to win a UDRP domain arbitration case when you don’t respond to the proceedings. (Difficult, but not impossible). But sometimes not responding to a case is a better idea than responding with a half-hearted story.
That’s what happened in the case or RAI.mobi, a generic domain name won by complainant RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana S.p.A. This isn’t a case of someone registering a trademark domain and putting pay-per-click links on it related to the trademark holder. According to the panel decision, a parked page wasn’t at issue. Instead, it was the respondent offering a bungled response to why it registered the domain name in the first place.
The respondent pointed out that Radiotelevisione Italiana doesn’t have exclusive rights to “RAI”. That’s true. But then it pointed out that another trademark holder was more popular in search results than Radiotelevisione Italiana. The respondent also seemed to want to connect itself to that other trademark holder, but failed to show any real connection.
In this particular case, I think the respondent would have had a better chance of winning had he not responded at all. True, a good response showing that it wasn’t registered in bad faith would be best, but it would be hard for Radiotelevisione Italiana to make a case that RAI.mobi was registered or used in bad faith when it wasn’t being used at all.
Read the case here.
Further Reading:
“Rai” is a dictionary term meaning, “A form of popular Algerian music combining traditional Arabic vocal styles with various elements of popular Western music and featuring outspoken, often controversial lyrics.”
He could have just said something like, “I purchased it because I like rai music.”
Still, at least it’s in the hands of an end user now and will probably be developed. They have their main site at Rai.it but also use Rai.tv, so Rai.mobi will be a good choice for their mobile site.
He should have developed the site at some point and that would have stopped this.
Non-use of a domain, it seems lately, is now being used sometimes as a sign of bad faith intent.
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[...] RAI.mobi Owner Needs to Put a Foot in His Mouth Domain Name Wire ,February 03, 2009 That’s what happened in the case or RAI.mobi, a generic domain name won by complainant RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana SpA This isn’ta case of someone … [...]