Mom & Me is a maternity clothing line in India.
A UDRP against the domain MomAndMe.com – registered in 2000, according to DomainTools – failed to snatch the domain from its registrant.
Using an Indian trademark from 2008, the Complainant, Mahindra & Mahindra Limited, attempted to justify their filing against the dot .com. The company owns the .in variant, from where it operates its business of maternity clothing in India.
A very observant panelist, Alistair Payne, noted that the alleged trademark is pending since 2008 and is not, in fact, registered:
“The Complainant does not own registered trade mark rights for its MOM & ME trade mark but has trade mark applications for a stylized logo mark including the MOM & ME word mark pending since 2008.”
The real substance is in the following statement, which points out that the domain, as registered in 2000, is eight years senior to the pending mark:
“The disputed domain name was registered on April 2, 2000. There is no evidence before the Panel to suggest other than that the original registration was undertaken by the United States based Respondent. In short, there is no evidence to suggest that the disputed domain name was acquired by the Respondent after 2008 and therefore after the date on which the Complainant commenced its business in India under the MOM & ME mark. On this basis it seems to the Panel that this is most likely a case of the Respondent having registered the disputed domain name in 2000, well before the Complainant had commenced first use of its mark in 2008.”
Despite not responding, the Registrant got to keep the domain, and should consider themselves lucky.
For the full text of the UDRP against MomAndMe.com click here.
How ridiculous that the registrant has to defend the use of their own domain name and should consider themselves lucky. There is no luck involved with being first in first served, it is quite obvious that the name is used by the registrant well and truly before the complainant came into existence and that it has nothing to do with the Indian business. Plus the words Mom and Me being American in nature, for example we say ‘Mum’ in Australia. If I were a business running ‘Mum and Me Pty Ltd’ in Australia I would not automatically assume a global trademark for the use of my business name in America and then usurp the domain name via a UDRP. The term ‘Mom and Me’ is also not the same as ‘Mom&Me’, they are not the same and the use of such a broad range topic could encompass so many different things, it’s like putting a trademark on ‘breakfast’, or ‘school’, nobody should own words that are used broadly, exclusively for their own use. Period! This is quite correctly provided for in this decision an open and shut case. If the respondent decides to sell the domain name to the Indian business they should consider themselves very lucky indeed!