Mom & Me is a maternity clothing line in India.
A UDRP against the domain MomAndMe.com – registered in 2000, according to DomainTools – failed to snatch the domain from its registrant.
Using an Indian trademark from 2008, the Complainant, Mahindra & Mahindra Limited, attempted to justify their filing against the dot .com. The company owns the .in variant, from where it operates its business of maternity clothing in India.
A very observant panelist, Alistair Payne, noted that the alleged trademark is pending since 2008 and is not, in fact, registered:
“The Complainant does not own registered trade mark rights for its MOM & ME trade mark but has trade mark applications for a stylized logo mark including the MOM & ME word mark pending since 2008.”
The real substance is in the following statement, which points out that the domain, as registered in 2000, is eight years senior to the pending mark:
“The disputed domain name was registered on April 2, 2000. There is no evidence before the Panel to suggest other than that the original registration was undertaken by the United States based Respondent. In short, there is no evidence to suggest that the disputed domain name was acquired by the Respondent after 2008 and therefore after the date on which the Complainant commenced its business in India under the MOM & ME mark. On this basis it seems to the Panel that this is most likely a case of the Respondent having registered the disputed domain name in 2000, well before the Complainant had commenced first use of its mark in 2008.”
Despite not responding, the Registrant got to keep the domain, and should consider themselves lucky.
For the full text of the UDRP against MomAndMe.com click here.
