The Local Transplant: Girl beats World. Photo courtesy of TheLocalTransplant.com
It doesn’t happen too often, but an Ohio transplant to San Francisco operating from TheLocalTransplant.com has beaten the UDRP of an aggressor at the National Arbitration Forum – all without the help of a lawyer.
Aimee Rancer cited her free speech rights, along with the use of her blog for non-commercial purposes and fought off the trademark holders of “Local Transplants.”
There is no doubt that there is no visible confusion between the Complainant’s web site and mark, as seen at LocalTransplants.com and Aimee Rancer’s personal blog, where she posts photos of her daily life on the West Coast.
The sole NAF panelist, Luiz Edgard Montaury Pimenta, sided with the Respondent and thus delivered his decision on the matter:
“Respondent argues that it did not have actual knowledge of Complainant’s rights in the mark, it merely registered the domain name based on the fact that she wanted to tell a blog-style narrative of herself as “transplant” who moved from Ohio to live on her own on the West Coast of the United States. The Panel finds that Respondent did not register or use the <thelocaltransplant.com> domain name with actual knowledge of Complainant’s rights in the mark, based on the common terms of which the domain name consists, and thus concludes that Respondent did not register and use the domain name in bad faith under Policy ¶ 4(a)(iii).”
Potentially, had Aimee Rancer utilized the services of an IP attorney, we would have seen a case of reverse domain name hijacking, to be added to Rick Schwartz’s Hall of Shame. 😀
Link to the NAF decision is here.
Thanks for highlighting, DomainGang!
Aimee – You’re welcome, congratulations on the outcome; you won the UDRP fair and square. 😀
Thank you Aimee for setting an example that small guys with legitimate reasons can beat the big guys.