Domain name owner had a plausible defense, but didn’t bother to respond to the allegations.
Car company BMW has won rights to the domain name B.MW through a cybersquatting arbitration proceeding through World Intellectual Property Organization.
.Mw domain names are country code domain name for Malawi. .Mw domain names use the same UDRP rules applicable to other domains, such as .com.
BMW argued that the domain name registrant surely knew of the company, and that offering the domain name for sale for over $1 million was proof that it was registered in bad faith.
In this case, the owner of the domain name didn’t respond to the allegations. Had he done so, he might have actually been able to win this case.
The owner of b.mw owns a number of one letter and generic domain names in various country codes. In fact, he owns a.mw and c.mw. So he could have made the case that he registered the domain name because it was a single letter domain, not because b.mw is similar to the car maker’s name.
That said, it would be harder to justify why b.mw is price over a million dollars while c.mw is offered for just $5,000.
B.mw will make great URL shortener.
Joseph Peterson says
That’s an interesting point – about the asking price itself being a potential sign of bad faith.
If he only owned B.MW and no similar 1-letter + ccTLD domains, then it would perhaps be ambiguous. However, if he owned multiple domains of that form and priced B.MW much higher than the others, then that would be a dead giveaway. We’d all know which buyer he expected to come along.