Company tries to get matching .com that receives misdirected email.
If you don’t own the .com version of your domain name, you are likely missing emails intended for your company.
That’s why law firm Farrer & Co LLP filed a UDRP against Farrer.com. It uses Farrer.co.uk, and it learned that clients sent sensitive information to email addresses at @Farrer.com.
The firm lost the dispute, though.
A three-member World Intellectual Property Organization panel found that Farrer didn’t show that the owner, which runs an IT firm, lacked legitimate rights or interests in the domain. It also didn’t show that the domain was registered in bad faith.
The panel pointed out that the law firm could have obtained the domain on a couple of occasions as it has changed hands twice since it was originally registered in 1997.
It appears that the current registrant acquired the domain in a NameJet auction in 2012 for only $3,100.
The panel stopped short of finding Farrer & Co LLP to have filed the case in bad faith.
C.S. Watch says
Surname-domain filings should be automatic RDNH—it is about as generic as a term can get. Yet this Panel only regurgitates: “Farrer” is a common surname and the Respondent lists 69 registered companies incorporating the name “Farrer”.
There are thousands of people in the US alone named Farrar—the Complainant has one place of business, in one city.