UDRP has been denied.
The UDRP against the domain AltaMotors.com was denied at the National Arbitration Forum.
The case was filed by Faster Faster, Inc. DBA Alta Motors against Jeongho Yoon c/o AltaMart of South Korea.
In its statement, the Complainant alleged the Respondent has no rights to the domain, that the Complainant owns over 200 “Alta” domains and that the domain was registered in 2003.
Basically, they offered free fodder for the NAF panelist to determine the following:
The facts determinative of this question in the instant proceeding, as set out in the Complaint, are these:
- Respondent registered the domain name <altamotors.com> on or about October 28, 2003, and that registration has remained with Respondent from that time to the present;
- Complainant has rights in the ALTA MOTORS trademark by reason of its registration of the mark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (Registry No. 5,082,683, registered November 15, 2016, on an application filed September 8, 2014, with a first use in commerce dating from April 18, 2016); and
- Complainant asserts that it has also established common law rights in its ALTA MOTORS mark dating from, perhaps, as early as April 18, 2016.
These facts permit of no other conclusion than that Respondent could not have registered the <altamotors.com> domain name in bad faith.
Respondent registered the domain name more than a decade before Complainant introduced the ALTA MOTORS mark in commerce. Respondent therefore could not have entertained bad faith intentions respecting the mark because it could not have contemplated Complainant’s then non-existent rights in it at the moment the domain name was registered.
All this, despite a lack of response by the Respondent, perhaps due to lack of understanding the seriousness of this UDRP notice.
The sole panelist, Terry F. Peppard, ordered the domain to remain with its current Registrant.
Read the full text of this UDRP decision for AltaMotors.com.
Where’s the RDNH finding?