German man registered the domain name three days after Netflix released the hit movie.
Netflix has convinced (pdf) a World Intellectual Property Organization panel to award it the domain name KPopDemonHunters.com.
The studio and streaming service released its smash hit on June 20. Three days later, a German man registered the matching domain name.
Under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), a company has to show that it has trademark rights in the term in order to win a domain name.
Netflix didn’t file for trademarks until after releasing the hit film, but argued it had common law trademark rights prior to the domain name being registered.
Can a company get common law rights within a few days of using a mark?
Yes, when it comes to the UDRP. It’s clear that the man who registered the domain did so only because of Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters movie, and it was a clear case of cybersquatting.
In a similar vein, Google has won a number of cases against people who registered domains containing “Nano Banana” within days of the company releasing an AI model by that name. Not all panels agree, though, or at least require the Complainant to provide a lot of evidence of its rights.
Some people would argue that Netflix dropped the ball by failing to register the matching domain name before releasing the film. Perhaps, but the studio probably didn’t know how big a sensation the movie would be, and it probably doesn’t need to register matching domains for all its releases.
“Can a company get common law rights within a few days of using a mark?”
Yes. The relative distinctiveness of a mark is a factor in that kind of determination. Obviously, inherently distinctive marks are born distinctive, whereas at the other end of the spectrum some descriptive terms require substantial time to acquire distinctiveness.
What have I just witnessed
Justice.