If you’ve used WinRar as a utility to compress files in the RAR format, you probably did the obvious: typed in WinRar.com.
Most likely millions of others did the same thing in the years since WinRar.com was registered in 1998.
The only problem: That wasn’t the Windows utility’s web site, which was hosted at RarSoft.com instead.
A UDRP at the WIPO was filed by the German company win.rarGmbH, that is leasing the WINRAR mark from Alexander Roshal, creator of the compression utility.
The domain’s registrant, Win Road Assistance Repairs Pvt. Ltd., claims to have made use of the domain as a road assistance service. However, as seen at Screenshots.com, the domain featured WinRar software as provided by RarSoft.
WinRar.com screenshot from 2013.
As mentioned in the UDRP:
“In any case, the Respondent has failed to explain why, despite its claim in the Roshal Case that it registered the disputed domain name to further and expand its motor services business and that the parties were in no way competitors, it later chose to make the somewhat unusual leap from motor services to distribution of the Complainant’s comparatively niche software product. Even if the Respondent did in fact consider that its business was “local” and that it wanted to use its domain name / website to attract business from users abroad, the fact that the Respondent or its “advertisers” selected the Complainant’s software as the subject matter for that venture can only have been because the Respondent intended to capitalise on the identity of the disputed domain name with the Complainant’s name / trade mark.”
In a UDRP case involving the previous owners of the domain, the domain’s transfer to the Complainant was denied in 2008.
This time around, however, a trio of Panelists decided that the Respondent’s use of the domain violated the Complainant’s trademarks and common law marks, and ordered WinRar.com to be transferred.
For the full text of the UDRP, click here.
