Three letter domain won through UDRP.
World Intellectual Property Organization panelist J. Nelson Landry has ordered the VAX.com domain name be transferred to floor care products company Vax Limited.
Landry noted that the term VAX was a “coined term”, and didn’t consider the potential that it was a generic acronym.
That said, the respondent didn’t do himself any favors. Not only did he fail to respond to the proceedings, but he’s also lost 11 UDRP decisions in the past two years.
I found 69 cases handled by Landry since 2003. He found in favor of the complainant in all but one case.
I wouldn’t call “VAX” a “coined term”, given that it had use in the computer industry (from the Digital Computer VAX-based systems), and that the complainant in this case is using it in the vacuum cleaner business (i.e. vacuum cleaners = “vacs”, and “vax” is a obviously a variation on that theme).
Exxon and Verizon are classic examples of “coined” marks.
I meant “Digital Equipment Corp” (i.e. DEC) above.
Wasn’t vax.com dropped sometime last year? Snapnames prerelease with lots of bids, IIRC. Or maybe it was renewed at the last minute.
@ SL – vax.org sold on NameJet, not sure about .com
This Landry bag stinks.
The respondent is a cybersquatter. Hard to give him any benefit of the doubt considering his 11 lost udrps and the balance of infrnging names in his portfolio. The panelist had two bad options and went for the least offensive of the two.
It seems that the Respondent in this case is Answerable.com’s Privacy Service.
It is not clear who the actual owner of the domain name is.
If the Panelist is treating the Privacy Service as the Respondent, then the fact that the Privacy Service was the losing respondent in eleven other UDRPs does not reveal anything about the intentions of the actual owner of this particular domain name.
I wonder as well whether the privacy service forwards on any email or mail that is sent to it. It would be odd that the owner of vax.com wouldn’t put up a fight.
The other UDRPs that I’ve been able to find with the same privacy service as a respondent also have no response by the respondent.
http://domains.adrforum.com/domains/decisions/1324718.htm
(Respondent did not file a response yet complaint denied due to absence of trademark rights)
http://domain.adrforum.com/domains/decisions/1308139.htm
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/text/2010/d2010-0898.html
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/text/2010/d2010-0358.html
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/text/2010/d2010-0591.html
http://193.5.93.80/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=D2010-1442
The history of vax.com is interesting as well. It used to be owned by Dirt Devil, the vacuum manufacturer. In November 2008, it switched registration to the Privacy Service. The expiration date at the time showed September 2009.
Another possibility is that Dirt Devil let vax.com expire and when it deleted was kept in-house by the Answerable registrar, which is owned by Directi, the same registrar where Dirt Devil kept vax.com.
On Sep 28, 2008, whois history shows an expiration date of the same day: Sep 28, 2008. On Sep 29, 2008, whois history shows the new expiration date is Sep 28, 2009.
This could mean that Dirt Devil waited until the very last day to renew its domain for an additional year. Or it could mean that DirectI follows the same practice as many other registrars of displaying an expiration date one-year in the future for domains that have expired. That the ownership changed hands to the Privacy Service on Nov 7, 2008, might be consistent with a domain that has gone through the delete cycle and been picked up by the registrar.
If so, the lack of response could just mean that Directi doesn’t bother responding to UDRPs for domains in its expired domain portfolio.
Before they get all of their lawyers involved
wouldn’t it have been cheaper for the VAX company to just buy the domain for say $20,000? It probably cost them a lot more in legal fees.