AWOL domain name owner can keep domain name.
Casual gaming site Meet2Play GmbH has failed to win the domain name M2P.com through UDRP, despite the domain name owner not responding.
From reading the decision, it appears the company tried to contact the domain name owner but was unsuccessful. It then filed the UDRP in an attempt to get the domain name.
But the domain name was registered in 1997, more than a decade before Meet2Play filed a mark for M2P. Because of this, the panel noted that it is impossible that the domain name owner was targeting the casual gaming site when it registered the domain name. Thus, it was not registered in bad faith.
The panelist on the case did seem to suggest that the complainant still could have won had it provided different evidence, citing the Telstra Corporation Limited v. Nuclear Marshmallows case that tries to turn the “Registered and Used in Bad Faith” argument on its head.
Thankfully, M2P didn’t provide that argument.
Anderson says
It seems companies haven’t realized that filing a UDRP isn’t the cheapest way to getting a desirable name.
Assuming they were knowledgeable of the time of registration for M2P, one would think they would have the common sense to completely lose the UDRP idea.
The Original Domainer says
Another recent no response win was undsports.com.