Despite no response from domain name owner, panelist considers all of the facts.
I often call out UDRP panelists who “phone in” their decisions without considering the other site of the story.
So today I’m happy to write about a case brought by pharmaceutical company Sanofi against the owner of Sinofn.com.
Panelist Susanna H.S. Leong should be commended for taking the time to truly consider the case Sanofi brought, despite the domain name owner not responding to the UDRP.
Sanofi, the company behind Plavix and Allegra, argued that Sinofn.com is a classic case of typosquatting against the Sanofi.com domain name. It also argued that Sanofi.com is a transliteration of the Chinese registered trademark of SANOFI (赛诺菲).
The domain name points to the website of a Chinese pharmaceuticals company Sinofn, but Sanofi noted that the whois record does not suggest it is owned by the company.
Leong took a look at all the facts and determined that Sanofi’s case had big holes in it. She noted that, given the distance of the letters “a”, “i” and “n” on a typical computer keyboard, the argument for deliberate misspelling of the Sanofi.com is weak. Also, the transliteration of 赛诺菲 would actually spell “sinofei” and not “sinofn”. Finally, she noted that the prefix “sino” in English is commonly used to refer to China.
Ultimately, she believes the domain name likely refers to the Chinese company Sinofn.
The panelist thus denied Sanofi’s request to transfer the domain name.
Kassey says
I spent a few minutes on Sinofn.com. It’s a real site operated by a real company in China making Chinese medicinal products. If Sanofi did not like the name Sinofn, they should have sued the company for trademark infringement rather than just the domain name.
Meyer says
If Sanofi was so concerned about the loss of traffic from typo, why didn’t they reg. the domain Sanofn .com which is unreg’d? And, it has never been reg’d?
This is another example of corporate lawyers trying to justify their job.