University loses case against alleged phishing web site.
The Regents of the University of Michigan have failed to take control of two domain names in a poorly argued UDRP case.
The university filed the claim to get control of SurveyResearchCenter.com and SurveyClaim.com, the latter of which it alleged is a phishing web site.
It claimed that it established the Survey Research Center in 1946. The panel granted that the SurveyResearchCenter.com domain name is confusingly similar to Michigan’s mark, but was baffled by the argument that SurveyClaim.com was also confusingly similar to that mark.
After evaluating the first prong of UDRP (confusing similarity), the panel had thrown out any claims on SurveyClaim.com. But it still considered if the registrant of SurveyResearchCenter.com had rights or legitimate interests in the domain. The registrant never responded to the case, but the university failed to make even a prima facie case:
In this case, Complainant has not provided any screen shots of the website resolving from the surveyresearchcenter.com domain name. Complainant has also failed to make arguments in its Complaint as to Respondent’s use of the disputed domain name and how that use relates to the Policy. While Complainant provides extensive evidence of the website resolving from the surveyclaim.com domain name, this use cannot be imputed to Respondent’s surveyresearchcenter.com domain name. For these reasons, the Panel determines that Complainant has not demonstrated a prima facie case and declines to transfer the
domain name…
University of Michigan owns the domain name SurveyResearchCenter.org. The domain name was previously registered to someone at Savannah State University. Indeed, a simple Google search shows that many universities of a “survey research center”.
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