A registered trademark does not give automatic rights to a domain.
A furniture moving company going by the name GetBellhops, filed a UDRP to challenge the ownership of the domain Bellhops.com.
According to the filing, Bellhops, Inc. of Chattanooga, Tennessee, based their filing on a 2015 registration date of the mark, BELLHOPS:
“The Complainant is a Delaware company offering business services based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, doing business throughout the United States in the field of moving company services, including the moving and installation of furniture and office equipment for others. The Complainant was formed on or around January 30, 2013 and had begun trading by the beginning of April 2014, including through a website at “www.getbellhops.com”. Its business since its inception has been carried out under the name and trademark BELLHOPS.”
Per the UDRP details, the Complainant is the proprietor of United States federal trademark registration No. 4747947 for BELLHOPS, filed on October 16, 2014 and registered on June 2, 2015 for “installation of furniture and office equipment, in Class 37” and “furniture moving; moving company services, in Class 39,” details of which were exhibited to the Complaint. The Complainant claimed a first use date of April 1, 2014.
Naturally, the Respondent fought back, highlighting the generic term of the domain and the fact that it was registered in 2000, almost 15 years before the Complainant’s mark.
The WIPO panelist, Angela Fox, found that there are no issues with the registration of this domain:
“The disputed domain name was registered in 2000, some 13 years before the Complainant registered and began to trade under its BELLHOPS trademark. There is no evidence that in registering the disputed domain name the Respondents (and/or NovoPoint) targeted the Complainant’s trademark. The disputed domain name corresponds to a common English word, and indeed at least some of the links on the website page linked to it related to the descriptive English meaning. There is no evidence that in registering the disputed domain name, the Respondents, or NovoPoint, targeted the Complainant. The Complainant did not exist at that time to be targeted.”
With that in mind, the Complainant’s request was denied.
For the full text of the UDRP decision on Bellhops.com, click here.
