Political group trying to retroactively create and protect brand.
One of the many “Tea Party” political groups, Tea Party Patriots, is running into some problems doing retroactive brand management. Tea Party Patriots, Inc. has filed three UDRP domain dispute cases, and only won one of them.
The first case was for six domain names including teapartypatriotspac.org. Tea Party Patriots won the case, despite some good arguments from the respondent.
The second case was for Teaparty-Patriots.com, and the panelist refused to even issue a decision on the case, effectively denying it. The panelist said this case was a trademark dispute outside the narrowly-defined concept of UDRP (“abusive registrations).
Finally, Tea Party Patriots, Inc., just lost a case for TeaPartyPatriots.com and TeaPartyPatriotsLive.com. This case really shows how Tea Party Patriots, Inc. is trying to go back in time to protect a mark — one that it perhaps wasn’t even the first to use:
Jason Hoyt of Respondent purchased the teapartypatriots.com domain name on March 3, 2009. He and Phil Russo created a radio show which they called Tea Party Patriots Live. Hoyt purchased the teapartypatriotslive.com domain name on April 14, 2009, and he and Phil Russo first broadcast the program on April 18, 2009. Hoyt organized Tea Party Patriots, LLC, which was registered in Florida for the purpose of marketing the radio show.
An individual named Amy Kremer started an online community website using the domain name teapartypatriotsning.com on March 6, 2009. She purchased the domain name teapartypatriots.org on March 10, 2009. She and others subsequently worked to establish a national organization which they called Tea Party Patriots. They created Complainant’s present corporate structure and registered it in Georgia on June 1, 2009. Complainant promoted and supported Respondent’s radio show, and Amy Kremer was a frequent guest. In turn, Respondent supported and promoted the national Tea Party Patriots organization and directed Internet users to the teapartypatriots.org website from its own until November 5, 2009, when it stopped doing so. On that date, Respondent learned that Complainant had created and was promoting its own radio show which it called Tea Party Patriots Live.
Tea Party Patriots doesn’t have any more UDRP cases pending.
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