Complainant tells panel how it generated PPC results of its competitors.
Kevin Ham’s Vertical Axis has successfully defended BrightSign.com in a UDRP with the help of Ari Goldberger of ESQwire.
Vertical Axis won for a number of reasons, including that the domain name was registered well before the complainant started using the term “Bright Sign” in commerce. Of course, it’s also a generic domain name.
But the funny part is the ridiculous assertion BrightSign LLC made about how the parked domain name leads to competitors’ sites:
The website linked to the disputed domain name is simply a “parking siteâ€. Immediately below the heading that states, “Welcome to brightsign.com,†there is a link that says: “Click here to make an offer on this domain nameâ€. One click from the home page’s “business†link, consumers are directed to links of Complainant’s competitor, MVIX, when the words “digital sign†are entered into the search box, and to another competitor, Western Digital, when the words “digital media player†are entered. It is well settled that by directing traffic to sites of competitors or by confusing customers of Complainant, Respondent creates confusion with the intent of driving up the price of the disputed domain name, which constitutes bad faith under the Policy.
Now, I’ve seen complainants try to fool panels by showing printouts of competitors’ links on a parked page that were generated by entering a search term in the search box. But in this case the complainant actually told the panel that’s what it did!
Granted, the panel doesn’t address how these links were generated. But it came to the correct final conclusion anyway.
It won’t be long till one of the businesses up the street from my vacant lot tries to sue me for the property. You vacant lot is not being used. I want it and I am not willing to pay for it.
Sooner or later.
“it’s also a generic domain name”
I don’t think so. Bright or Sign would be generic, but when you combine them it is not, at that point it is brandable.
I still agree on the outcome.
I don’t think I would have paid to defend this one. Good for Kevin though. He clearly gets what is valuable more than I do.
Kevin has to defend it. He doesn’t need
to be branded a cybersquatter because of
a lot of losses.
Another yay for Ari! These UDRP cases are kind of scary considering panelists sometimes make shit up as they go on. Ari is a good guy to have on your side. Along with Berryhill. Them Traverselegal guys flaked out after asking them a few detailed questions of “what exactly” will they provide for the quotation they gave me for mid $x,xxx.
@ Meyer “Kevin has to defend it. He doesn’t need to be branded a cybersquatter because of
a lot of losses.”
How many losses does one need to incurr before being labelled a cybersquatter? Whatever that number is Ham certainly qualifies. If they had a three strikes rule in domain law Ham would be accepting the sausage daily from someone names Bubba.
No matter how you cut it Ham is one of the most aggregious squatters out there but people love Ham because he knows how to make bacon and everybody loves a weiner, I mean winner.
Hams domain registrations lost in disputes include
HARVEYS-TAHOE.com (clear squat)
MBNAACCESS.com (tm inclusion)
PEARLJAMS.com (typosquat)
LEASPLAN.com (typo of
BZZAGEN and BZZAGET.com (bzzagent typos)
DENETMAX.com (recent squat with infringement)
There are more
Many more
The facts support the notion that Kevin Ham is a serial cybersquatter