Just when you think you’ve seen them all…

This is a terrible argument in a UDRP.

I’ve seen a lot of spurious arguments in UDRP cases, and one from a case published this week lands in my top 5.

McCoy & Partners B.V., an SAP consulting firm, filed a UDRP against McCoy.com. The company uses mccoy-partners.com and wanted to upgrade its domain.

Without even reading the case details, you can tell this would be a difficult case to win. McCoy is a common surname, so there would have to be some sort of exceptional direct targeting involved to win the UDRP.

It seems that the Complainant filed the case because it couldn’t get a response when it inquired about the domain. So it argued that this failure to respond to its overtures was some sort of violation of the domain registration agreement! Here’s how this argument was summarized in the case decision:

The Respondent ignores all contact attempts. The failure of the Respondent to respond to communications violates the Respondent’s obligation in its domain name registration agreement to regularly monitor emails. Under the registration agreement, a domain owner is liable to lose its domain name if it does not respond to emails relating thereto.

The lack of response from the Respondent is analogous to the failure of a respondent to respond to a UDRP complaint and is indicative a lack of legitimate interest on the part of the Respondent.

Wow.

The domain owner didn’t respond to the dispute but still (unsurprisingly) won. Panelist Adam Taylor noted that the domain was registered in 2001, well before the Complainant existed. Taylor also pointed out that, even if the domain owner acquired the domain later, the fact that it’s a popular surname would have made this case difficult to win.

AKD N.V. represented the Complainant.

Post link: Wow, check out this argument in a UDRP

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Original article: Wow, check out this argument in a UDRP

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