Company that uses a confusing .me domain name wants a better .me.
The owner of ApproveMe.me has lost a cybersquatting complaint if filed against the owner of Approve.me.
A single-member World Intellectual Property Organization panel found that Approve.me has legitimate rights and interests in the domain name and that it wasn’t registered in bad faith.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out, and I’m surprised a UDRP was filed. If anything, this is a trademark case and not a cybersquatting case.
After all, the complainant found out about the respondent after the respondent announced the launch of its new business. That’s a good indication that it has rights or legitimate interests in the domain name.
ApproveMe.me offers a WordPress plugin for esigning documents. Approve.me is a platform for financing and leasing providers.
Let’s face it; ApproveMe.me is a confusing domain name. What confuses me even more is that the complainant also owns ApproveMe.com. It clearly couldn’t acquire Approve.me originally, so it went with ApproveMe.me. But why not ApproveMe.com instead?
Ryan says
Well it starts at the top maybe sue the people who issued the extension to confuse their clients, it is all absurd, why not carry it on.
What do they think is going to keep happening with all these new extensions?
Rob says
It is not a Trademark Case either because they offer different services/products.
Andrew Allemann says
It certainly seems like different services from their websites. The complainant argues otherwise.
C.S. Watch says
The Complainant has been C&D’ing this Respondent since he acquired approve.me in 2014. I wonder if he fraudulently C&D’d the 2008 registrant into dropping it? That seems possible, given the Respondent’s ‘two-month’ acquisition window.
As you noted, he also owns approveme.com. It looks like he just acquired it in February 2016. (http://whoisrequest.com/history/approveme.com). The approveme.com domain was for sale throughout the years before then, but was likely expensive. (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4RK_JvMbbGYJ:approveme.com/%3Fai%3D1+&cd=15&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)
So…one month after he’s got approveme.com in pocket, Complainant launches this UDRP. But he postures in the complaint as ‘approveme.me.’ Meanwhile, back at the Google:
Complainant’s URL on LinkedIn: approveme.com.
(https://www.linkedin.com/company/approveme.)
His March 2016 press campaign, his URL: approveme.com.
(https://www.activecampaign.com/marketplace/recipe/email-contracts-using-wordpress.)
Distasteful.
August says
this was a case of stupid approveme.me operator. Simple as that.