Thread: Respondent Loses 1,519 Domains in Domain Dispute

In a recent WIPO UDRP decision, a respondent lost 1,519 out of 1,542 domain names (13 had expired, and 10 did not contain any of the complainant's trademarks). The respondent did not file a formal response to the complaint.

The two complainants were Six Continents Hotels, Inc and Inter-Continental Hotels Corporation. The disputed domains had similar-looking websites set up on them (and which included advertising links that competed with the complainants' businesses).

The 1,529 disputed domain names the subject of this dispute were registered over the period spanning December 9, 2008 to July 21, 2009 however the vast majority were registered over a period of five days (between July 17 to 21, 2009).

It must have been a busy (and expensive) time for the respondent! BTW, the domains are all hyphenated ones.

It's not surprising that the respondent lost the domains as they obviously infringed on trademarks belonging to the hotels. Here are just a few of TM domains that were lost:

candlewood-suites-airport.com
candlewood-suites-kansas.com
crowne-plaza-athens-city.com
crowne-plaza-downtown-denver.com
holiday-express-belgrade.com
holiday-express-chesapeake.com
holiday-inn-airport-ratingen.com
holiday-inn-ex-suites-columbia.com
holiday-inn-suites-chicago.com
holiday-suites-grand-rapids.com
holiday-suites-toronto-markham.com
intercontinental-at-the-plaza.com
intercontinental-west-miami.com
staybridge-suites-san-jose.com
staybridge-savannah-airport.com

Note:

The Respondent also owns a large number of domain names (over 22,000 names) that contain trade marks owned by hotel companies other than the Complainant, including Best Western, Doubletree and Hilton.

I foresee a few more domain disputes...

I'm guessing the respondent's strategy is to monetise the domains and recover the registration fees for each of these 22,000 domains. At the end of the day, all this is bad publicity for the domain industry as the domains involve TM infringement.

What do you think of this case?

I think this guy is a fool for spending so much money on these names in the first place and also a fool for buying so many TM names. Nothing much else to say really. :O