Allstate
The registrant of Allstate.Claims got slapped with a UDRP by the Allstate Insurance Company; in a cheeky response, the Respondent stated:
“Based on this complaint, this Complainant would be filing a complaint if ANYONE owned 645 other domain extensions that pertain to the word “Allstate”, such as Allstate.Actor, Allstate.Academy, Allstate.Accountants, Allstate.Ads, Allstate.Africa, Allstate.Apartments, Allstate.Architect, Allstate.Art, Allstate.Associates, Allstate.Attorney, Allstate.Auction, Allstate.Auto, Allstate.Autos, Allstate.Bar, Allstate.Bargains, Allstate.Bet, Allstate.Build.
If Complainant would like to legally purchase and use the Domain Name it should make a reasonable offer at current market prices.”
The ALLSTATE mark is a famous mark going back to 1961, which was registered thirty years after the formation of the insurance giant in 1931.
The Respondent further alleged that the dot in the middle invalidates the Complainant’s mark:
“ALLSTATE and ALLSTATE.COM are indeed registered as trademarks. However, Complainant does not have rights in “Allstate.Claims” because that mark is not registered with USPTO.”
Such an approach *might* work with generic words, where the left and right part of the dot could form a trademark jointly, but in the case of ALLSTATE – a fanciful mark – that does not seem to apply.
Alan L. Limbury, Panelist at the National Arbitration Forum, ordered the domain Allstate.Claims to be transferred to the Complainant.
You can read about that decision here.
