A UDRP should be responded to, or you might risk losing the domain.
A very peculiar and rather crafty UDRP at the National Arbitration Forum has resulted in the loss of the generic and aged domain name, BrandEnhancement.com.
The domain was registered in 1999, and it has been renewed every year since.
The Complainant, Leonhard Kurz Stiftung & Co. KG, is a large international company and a supplier of hot stamping and branding technology, based in Germany and online at Kurz.de.
In their filing, the Complainant stated that they have spent $125,000 dollars marketing the “brand enhancement” mark; they also have registered “Brand Enhancement by Kurz” in Germany.
The trademark application was filed in 2013 and was granted in April of 2014, a whole 15 years after the domain name, BrandEnhancement.com was registered!
Here’s where things get interesting.
Apparently, the Respondent’s contact information is outdated, and they did not respond to any email inquiries either. Their formed company was dissolved in 2000, and yet, somehow, the domain name gets renewed every year.
The managing email for the domain belongs to a domain name, nlightcom.com, that dropped as many as 8 years ago.
As expected, the Respondent did not file a response to this UDRP, and the sole panelist, Neil Anthony Brown, found all three necessary clauses under the UDRP satisfied.
The domain name, BrandEnhancement.com was thus ordered to be transferred to the Complainant.
Moral of the story: ensure your WHOIS info is accurate and up to date. You can read the full case here.
