UDRP: Loss for the Respondent.
The aged, three letter .com domain ADO.com has been lost via the UDRP process.
Registered in 1999, ADO.com was challenged by utobuses de Oriente ADO, S.A. de C.V. of Mexico City, Mexico.
The Respondent in this UDRP, is popular French domain investor and entrepreneur, Francois Carrillo.
Apart from claiming rights to the ADO mark, the Mexican company utilized the Respondent’s public domain portfolio of short domains, as featured at Catchy.com, to claim that it’s a “for profit” activity. Some of the logos on Catchy.com look like those of other marks, according to the Complainant.
Francois Carrillo stated he had no knowledge of the ADO mark:
Respondent claims that as a Frenchman, he knew the French word “ado” to be a common abbreviation of the word “adolescent”, as shown in the Collins French-English Dictionary, in Wikipedia, and in numerous press articles. Respondent, as someone proficient in English, states that he was also aware that the word “ado” was a common English word meaning “fuss”, as shown in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and as used by Shakespeare in the title to his play, “Much Ado About Nothing.” Respondent states that he knew that three-letter domain names were rare and had intrinsic value, especially as acronyms for numerous things and entities.
ADO.com was being offered for sale for $500,000 dollars, and a three member panel at the WIPO, consisting of Christopher S. Gibson, William R. Towns and David H. Bernstein, ordered the domain ADO.com to be transferred to the Complainant.
Read the details of this UDRP decision.
