The owner of the trademark for BeautyLab just lost its attempt to grab the domain name TheBeautyLab.com
The sole UDRP panelist Brigitte Joppich bascially found that although the Complainant had valid trademarks registered before the domain name, including in the country where the domain holder operates, the term Beauty Lab was too generic to enjoy any protection in the UDRP process.
Here are the relevant facts and findings:
“”The Complainant operates a beauty and cosmetics business distributing products including, without limitation, skincare facial and body products, facial and body treatments, and tanning products.
The Complainant owns a number of trademark registrations for BEAUTYLAB, some of them featuring additional textual or graphical elements, inter alia United States trademark registration No. 3735306 BEAUTYLAB, filed on May 25, 2005, and registered on January 5, 2010; UK trademark registration No. 2253190 BEAUTYLAB, applied for on November 17, 2000, and registered on June 29, 2001,
The disputed domain name was registered on April 26, 2012, and Internet users visiting the website at the disputed domain name are forwarded to the Respondent’s website at “www.araroson.com”, where the Respondent offers services related to beauty and healthcare.
In the present case, on balance, the Panel is not satisfied that the Respondent registered the disputed domain name with positive knowledge of the Complainant’s trademark rights and therefore in bad faith for the following reasons:
– The Complainant’s BEAUTYLAB Marks consist of the dictionary words “beauty” and “lab” and have, in the opinion of the Panel, only a comparatively low degree of distinctiveness with regard to services related to beauty and healthcare as provided by the Respondent.
– The Complainant did not offer any evidence that the BEAUTYLAB Marks enjoy a secondary meaning or are well-known.
– The Complainant did not provide any evidence with regard to the duration and extent of its use of the BEAUTYLAB Marks in Spain, where the Respondent is located.
– The Respondent uses the disputed domain name to forward users to her website available at “www.araroson.com” and refers to the term “my beauty lab” on her website in connection with her business, stating inter alia “My Beauty Lab es un laboratorio de belleza” (in English “My Beauty Lab is a laboratory of beauty”) and therefore, in the view of the Panel, uses the term in a dictionary rather than in a trademark sense.
For the foregoing reasons, the Complaint is denied.””
