Would you like to buy a different vowel?
Amegy, amogy: They are the same, right?
Apparently, Amegy Bank National Association thought so, when they filed a UDRP with the WIPO against the owners of the domain Amogy.com. The Bank operates from Amegy.com and owns the trademark for AMEGY BANK.
The Respondent, Wolfgang Moecklin of Germany, fought back, stating that the two are substantially different words; his choice of “Amogy” is related to “love” and has registered the domain lovgy.com as well for that purpose.
As the domain was only registered in September, the Respondent had no time to set up anything on the web site Amogy.com.
He also stated that he’s not even remotely related to the Complainant’s bank services:
“The Respondent denies that it registered and has used the disputed domain name in bad faith. The Respondent says that it is not active in the field of banking or financial services, and denies that it was aware of the Complainant’s marks when it registered the disputed domain name. The Respondent says that this case is different to the past cases referenced by the Complainant because the disputed domain name is short and is not an example of typosquatting.”
In the past, Amegy Bank fought and won several UDRP cases on typosquatting domains that incorporated its mark, such as mamegybank.com, amegebank.com and wwwamegy.com – but they lost this one.
The sole panelist, James A. Barker, denied the UDRP noting both the Complainant’s lack of an exact match to the AMEGY mark, and the lack of similarity with the disputed domain; he did ponder on the validity of the Respondent’s alleged intent, regardless.
For the full text of the UDRP on Amogy.com, click here.
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