Ownership of strong trademarks naturally lead to decisions that favor the Complainant.
Just four days ago we unveiled how Seagate – the storage media giant – filed and won a UDRP for Seagate.org at the National Arbitration Forum.
The decision was made on the virtual white flag of surrender that the Seagate.org registrant raised.
Now Seagate took that advantage and went after the domain name Seagate.net.
This was an expected move: a positive UDRP decision for one TLD can assist, when filing a case for another one. In this case, however, the UDRPs for both the .org and the .net were filed simultaneously.
For 11 years, the Korean owner of Seagate.net kept the domain, eventually parking it at Sedo where the ads displayed were those of Seagate products, along with products of competitor manufacturers.
Seagate owns multiple trademarks in several countries, including Korea – the native country of the Respondent – who did not bother to respond in this case.
Thus, the sole NAF panelist naturally decided that the domain should be handed over to the Complainant, Seagate.
