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World of Warcraft player ganks UDRP complainant

Kevin Murphy, August 17, 2010, 14:28:53 (UTC), Domain Policy

An aviation safety consulting firm has lost its UDRP case against a gamer who used its company name for his World of Warcraft guild.
Wyvern Consulting went after wyvern.com, which was registered by its current owner back in 2005.
The registrant said he’d originally registered the name for a possible business venture, which fell through, and then decided to use it for his WoW guild instead.
The National Arbitration Forum panelist found that while Wyvern proved the name was confusingly similar to its common law trademark, and that the registrant lacked legitimate interests in the domain, it had failed to prove bad faith.

Complainant does not have a registered trademark, and offers no proof of consumer confusion or loss of business. Respondent’s proof of its current use is minimal, but the burden is upon Complainant on this issue. Respondent’s use of the disputed domain name as a forum and e-mail service for its World of Warcraft guild does not establish that Respondent registered and used the disputed domain name in bad faith

The domain in question currently appears to be unused, although archive.org shows a WoW guild page back in 2008.

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Comments (4)

  1. Bret Moore says:

    I highlighted some different aspects of this panel’s decision. I think the 403 Forbidden thing just means the forum’s private – maybe he’s got specific IPs allowed through to a discussion forum? Or fileserver, whatever.

  2. Bret Moore says:

    As an update, I did get confirmation from the owner that they had private file hosting etc going on with the server, even though the panel discussion was only about email.

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