Nissan has lost the 2nd URS in the last three days after winning 10 in a row.
This time Nissan lost the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) on the domain name Nissan.email
The examiner Kendall C. Reed held:
“The Respondent holds the domain name as inventory, which is not inherently wrongful and can represent a legitimate interest, provided however that, at a minimum, the intended use would not constitute a bad faith use. As is noted below, Respondent’s intended use is not inevitably a bad faith use.
Registrant has registered or acquired the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark or to a competitor of that complainant, for valuable consideration in excess of documented out-of pocket costs directly related to the domain name; or
Registrant has registered the domain name in order to prevent the trademark holder or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, provided that Registrant has engaged in a pattern of such conduct; or
Registrant registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of disrupting the business of a competitor; or
By using the domain name Registrant has intentionally attempted to attract for commercial gain, Internet users to Registrant’s web site or other on-line location, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant’s mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of Registrant’s web site or location or of a product or service on that web site or location.
Respondent’s stated intended use for the domain name is to offer the same to unrelated third parties who might have the name Nissan.
This intended use is not necessarily in bad faith, but a determination of this issue is best left for the facts of such a case.
It might be different if the Complainant in this matter were able to demonstrate that the Respondent was engaged in a pattern of registering domain names for the purposed of preventing trademark and/or service mark holders from reflecting their respective marks in a corresponding domain name but in this matter no such allegation has been made and no supporting evidence has been provided.””
There are many companies named Nissan on this planet. Some of them may/can/will be engaged in an email business, not necessarily an auto manufacturing industry. There may/can/will be clinics, dentists, real estate agents, grocery stores, casinos, etc named Nissan somewhere in the world.
I don’t get Nissan’s strategy at all. Seems like their IP lawyer and the marketing team never talk. I first saw how Nissan ignored securing their domain names, when I did a post on .wien case studies.
The dot city TLDs are by far the most obvious to get, and they had both missed out on nissan.wien and nissan.berlin. So now it actually turns out that they do care?
Imagine the costs of filing these URSes compared to the reg cost of getting them in the first place? To any brand owner out there. At least don’t do a URS, if you have already made the decision to ignore the new gTLDs