Massive BackCountry.com UDRP case ignores rude typos

Amusingly, a huge 41-domain typosquatting UDRP case just filed by BackCountry.com contains none of the obvious, profane typos.
The claim, apparently filed by an outdoor equipment retailer, covers typos such as backxountry.com, backcountru.com and even backc9untry.com.
It does not include the typo that first occurred to me. You know the one I mean.
That domain exists, and is currently parked with suggestive, adult-oriented ad links.
In fact, none of the 41 domains listed in the National Arbitration Forum claim contain the particular four-letter Shakespearean pun that I’m thinking of.

Using Go Daddy equals “bad faith” registration

Registered a domain name with Go Daddy recently? Unless you’ve updated your name server settings, you’ve automatically committed a “bad faith” registration.
At least, that’s the conclusion I’m drawing from a couple of recent clueless UDRP decisions.
The most recent example is the case of Churchill Insurance, which just won churchillimports.com, following a proceeding with the National Arbitration Forum.
The registrant claimed he planned to use the domain, which he registered just six months ago, to sell cigars. Seems reasonable. Other sites sell cigars using the name “Churchill”.
But the NAF panelist, Flip Petillion, wasn’t buying it:

Respondent uses the churchillimports.com domain name to resolve to a directory website that displays links to third-party websites, some of which provide insurance products and services that compete with Complainant’s business.
…
it is shown on a balance of probability that Respondent uses the disputed domain name to operate a directory website and, thus, profits from this use through the receipt of “click-through” fees. Accordingly, the Panel finds that this use constitutes bad faith registration and use pursuant to Policy
…
as the disputed domain name was registered after the registration of Complainant’s established trademark rights and given the fact that Respondent’s website employs insurance themed links that resolve to websites of Complainant’s competitors, Respondent could not have registered and used the disputed domain name without actual or constructive knowledge of Complainant and its rights in the CHURCHILL mark.

What Petillion clearly failed to realize – or decided to conveniently ignore – is that everything he ascribes to the registrant was actually caused by default Go Daddy behavior.
Churchill sells car insurance in the UK. The registrant is an American, from Georgia. There’s a very slim chance he’d ever heard of the company before they slapped him with the UDRP.
But Petillion decided that the fact that insurance-themed links were present on the site shows that the registrant must have known about the company. Like he put the links there himself.
He concludes the registrant had “bad faith” because Go Daddy’s parking algorithm (I believe it’s operated by Google) knows to show insurance-related ads when people search for “churchill”.
In addition, churchillimports.com is the default parking page that Go Daddy throws up whenever a domain name is newly registered.
The registrant didn’t need to do anything other than register the name and, according to this bogus ruling, he’s automatically committed a bad faith registration.
Where does NAF find these people?
I’m sure I’m not the first to notice this kind of behavior, and I’m sure Go Daddy’s not the only registrar this affects.

RBS wins totally bogus UDRP complaint

The Royal Bank of Scotland has been handled control of the domain rbscout.com in a UDRP decision I have no trouble at all describing as utterly bogus.
RBS, naturally enough, owns a trademark on the term “RBS”. Its UDRP claim is based on the notion that a domain beginning with “rbs” is therefore confusingly similar.
For this to work, logically, the meaning of “rbscout” must be taken as “RBS cout”.
Cout?
The idea that the registrant actually had “RB scout” in mind does not appear to entered into the deliberation of the National Arbitration Forum panelist, Paul Dorf.
It took me all of two minutes with Whois and Google to determine that the registrant, The Auction Scout, is a player in the market for auctioning heavy machinery, and that RB, Ritchie Bros., is such an auctioneer.
There’s simply no way the registrant could have had RBS in mind when he registered the domain back in February.
So why did Dorf find evidence of bad faith?
Because the domain rbscout.com resolves to a default Go Daddy parking page, which displays advertising links to financial services sites including RBS’s own site.
So, just because Go Daddy’s algorithms are confused by the string “rbs” appearing in a domain, human beings would be similarly confused?
It defies common sense. Dorf should be ashamed of himself.

WIPO’s UDRP market share lead narrows

The number of UDRP cases filed with the National Arbitration Forum dipped slightly last year, according to NAF numbers released today.
The organization said it received 1,759 filings last year, compared to 1,770 in 2008. Only 1,333 of the cases were actually heard; the others were dropped or settled.
While that’s a decline for NAF, it’s not quite as steep as the almost 10% drop experienced by rival arbitrator WIPO over the same period.
That said, WIPO is still the primary choice of companies trying to enforce their trademarks in the domain name system, saying last month that it received 2,107 complaints in 2009.
It was also the year of big multi-domain cases for both outfits.
WIPO handed 1,542 domains to Inter-Continental Hotels in a single case, while NAF transferred a relatively modest 1,017 domains to ConsumerInfo.com.

Microsoft wins Bing.com IDN case

Microsoft has won a UDRP dispute over xn--bng-jua.com, an IDN typo of its Bing.com search engine brand.
The domain shows up as bıng.com when run through a Punycode translator, virtually indistinguishable from Microsoft’s trademark.
In what appears to be an open-and-shut case, National Arbitration Forum panelist Louis Condon found that the domain was registered in bad faith and transferred it to Microsoft.
The domain was registered on May 27, 2009, the day before Microsoft officially unveiled Bing (the news had already been leaked) and immediately parked.
The original registrant, Jason Harrington of Pennsylvania, did not respond to the UDRP complaint.