Case examples
In many of the UDRP cases it is obvious that a trademark infringement has been made, but there are some cases that are more complex. One of those cases is the quite famous Nissan case.
The Nissan case
The complainant in this case is Nissan Motors and the respondent is Nissan Computers. Nissan Motors filed a complaint regarding the domain names Nissan.com and Nissan.net, both owned by Nissan Computers. The owner of Nissan Computers, Uzi Nissan, has been using his last name in different businesses in the United States since 1980. At that time the cars today known as Nissan where known as Datsun. In 1991 Mr. Nissan started Nissan Computers. He then registered the domain name Nissan.com for his company in 1994. Later in 1996 he also registered the domain name Nissan.net, which he used for an Internet dial-up connection service.
In December 1999 Nissan Motors filed their complaint. This case ended up in court and Nissan Motors did not only want the domain names, they also wanted $10,000,000 in damages.
After a long and costly time in court the final decision was made in August 2004. The court gave Nissan Computers the right to continue using their domain names. Nissan Motors tried to get the case up to the US Supreme Court, but their petition was denied. This is one of the rare cases when the small company wins against the large one. Please take a look at Nissan.com for more information and details about the Nissan case.
A typical typosquatting case
In the case D2003-0161 the complainant is Six Continents Hotels Inc, the owner of the trademark ‘Holiday Inn’. The respondent is John Zuccarini. The disputed domain in question is hoildayinn.com.
The complainant thinks that the respondent is infringing on their trademark and uses the domain name for commercial gain. The respondent, a well-known cybersquatter, is redirecting all the traffic from the domain name to sites containing pornographic material. The complainant believes that this is tarnishing their valuable trademark and goodwill. The respondent’s only response to these accusations was that he argued that the complaint was “administratively deficient on jurisdictional grounds”. The response was not even based on legal or factual grounds and he was not trying to contest the complainant’s allegations. The panel found that the domain name was registered in bad faith and decided in favor of the complainant.
This case was filed to WIPO on February 28, 2003 and by April 17 the same year the decision was made. This is an example of how relatively fast WIPO can handle cases.