Source: https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=D2014-1399
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 17:06:32+00:00

Document:
The Complainant is O2 Holdings Limited of United Kingdom, represented by Stobbs IP Limited, United Kingdom.
The Respondent is Yoyo.Email / Giovanni Laporta of United States of America, represented by Traverse Legal PLC, United States of America.
The disputed domain name <theo2.email> (the “Domain Name”) is registered with GoDaddy.com, LLC (the “Registrar”).
The Complaint was filed with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center (the “Center”) on August 15, 2014. On August 15, 2014, the Center transmitted by email to the Registrar a request for registrar verification in connection with the Domain Name. On August 16, 2014, the Registrar transmitted by email to the Center its verification response confirming that the Respondents are listed as the registrants and providing the contact details.
In accordance with the Rules, paragraphs 2(a) and 4(a), the Center formally notified the Respondents of the Complaint, and the proceedings commenced on August 19, 2014. In accordance with the Rules, paragraph 5(a), the due date for Response was September 8, 2014. The Response was filed with the Center on September 8, 2014.
The Center appointed William P. Knight as the sole panelist in this matter on September 18, 2014. The Panel finds that it was properly constituted. The Panel has submitted the Statement of Acceptance and Declaration of Impartiality and Independence, as required by the Center to ensure compliance with the Rules, paragraph 7.
The Complainant is a member of a group of companies that provide telecommunications services, along with related music and entertainment services, the “O2” brand of which is very well known in the United Kingdom and other countries in which it does business. It has many registrations of the trade mark “O2” but also “THE O2” as a United Kingdom registered trade mark and a Community Trade Mark.
The first Respondent, Yoyo.email Limited, is a company incorporated in the United Kingdom, of which the second Respondent is the principal director. The second Respondent is an inventor, with a particular interest in locking devices, and has another business designing such devices.
The second Respondent’s inventive mind has turned to the issue of providing verifiable email communications. The Respondents are attempting to establish a business of doing this, for which purpose they deem it necessary to register domain names in the “.email” generic Top Level Domain (“gTLD”) incorporating well-known trade marks. So, here, the Respondents have acquired the Domain Name <theo2.email> but they have also registered “.email” domain names incorporating thousands of other well-known trade marks, such as <christies.email>, <disneyworld.email>, <domperignon.email>, <gatorade.email>, <gatwickairport.email> and so on. They also have domain names the purpose of which is not made clear, such as <register.email> and <setup.email>.
While there are existing technical means to track the path of an email and ascertain its fate, the Respondents assert that they wish to establish a simple, free service allowing anyone to contact a particular entity, such as the Complainant, and have a record of that transmission, and of any reply using the service, being kept by an independent third party record-keeper, namely the first Respondent.
The Respondents have no authority from any of the trade mark owners to do this but hope that the virtue of the service will be evident to sufficient numbers of them to make the service worthwhile, incidental to which, through advertising or other means not connected to the specific domain names registered by the Respondents, the Respondents may recoup and profit from the considerable expenses they have incurred already to develop this business model.
The Domain Name presently points to a blank page. The Respondents explain that it is not intended that this or any of the other domain names it has registered (other than <yoyo.email>, presumably) will be visible to the user of the service; rather the Respondents say that it will be used only as a technical, behind-the-scenes link to facilitate the service in some manner.
After the commencement of these proceedings, on August 29, 2014, the first Respondent or an entity apparently related to the Respondents, Yoyo.Email, LLC, filed a Complaint for Declaratory Judgment in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona against Playinnovation, Ltd. Whilst these proceedings do not share the same parties as those to such Complaint and concerns the URS Procedure not the Policy, the latter refers to the Domain Name in the course of seeking declarations, including declarations, relevantly, that the registration and use of the Domain Name, amongst others, is not a “violation” of the Policy and should be “removed from suspension or returned” to Yoyo.Email, LLC so that it may “continue to develop its business model…”.
The Complainant asserts registered trade mark rights and a substantial reputation, and affirms that it has not granted permission to the Respondents to register the Domain Name.
In the face of the Complainant’s reputation, it simply asserts that the Respondents do not have any apparent rights or legitimate interests in the disputed domain and that, there being no conceivable use of the disputed domain that would not be to capitalize in some manner on the Complainant’s reputation and confuse consumers, the Domain Name must have been registered in bad faith. The Complaint equates being “a domainer” with being a cybersquatter and, given the number of domain names registered by the Respondents, speculates that the Respondents must be using the Domain Name in bad faith.
It is clear from the Complaint that the Complainant was unaware of the Respondents’ history at the time of filing the Complaint.
The Respondents argue that, because of the Complaint filed in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona against Playinnovation Ltd, which touches on the domain name the subject of these proceedings, the Panel should exercise its discretion under paragraph 18(a) of the Rules to suspend or terminate these proceedings, citing McNeil Ohio Corporation v National Advertising, Inc, WIPO Case No. D2001-0409.
1. Panels have frequently exercised the discretion under paragraph 18(a) of the Rules to proceed to a decision despite concurrent or prior court proceedings. Such panels have recognized that doing so does not prevent either party, if dissatisfied with the result, from continuing to seek relief in court.
(d) where the dispute between the parties was broader and more complex than a dispute concerning domain names; but those panels proceeded to deny the complaint without addressing the merits of each element of the Policy in whole or part.
3. The panel may find the matters before the court in the concurrent proceedings useful in assessing the merits of the complaint and response in the administrative proceedings in making a determination under the Policy.
4. Where there is no evidence that the respondent has done any more than merely file proceedings, and no evidence of any substantive or procedural consideration of the merits of the claim by a court, it may be a very long time before even the issues for the court to decide are finalized, let alone a decision or earlier settlement – indeed, it may be that this court proceeding has been filed and not served, and/or may be withdrawn – and it may well be that there will be no decision relevant to the determination to be made under the Policy.
5. It is not necessarily the case that a determination under the Policy can in no way assist, resolve or narrow even part of the dispute between the parties. The determination may be useful in clarifying matters concerning the interpretation of the Policy; see also Newell Operating Company v. HostMonster.Com and Andrew Shalaby, WIPO Case No. D2008-1805 and Tiara Hotels & Resorts LLC v. John Pepin, WIPO Case No. D2009-0041.
In this case, the court proceedings are not even between the same parties and, by obvious extension, relate to different subject matter from that of the administrative proceeding under the Policy. As a consequence, exceptional circumstances would be required for the termination or suspension of the proceedings, such as in the decision cited by the Respondent, McNeil Ohio Corporation v National Advertising, Inc, in which a third party, the Ford Motor Company, had secured orders from a court of applicable jurisdiction “transferring the domain name to the custody of the Court” pending the outcome of those proceedings. Clearly, such circumstances are not present here; see also Aussie Car Loans Pty Ltd v. Wilson Accountants Pty Ltd, (formerly Wilson and Wilson Accountants), WIPO Case No. D2008-1477.
In this case, the court filing upon which the Respondents rely seeks declaratory relief in respect of a number of matters largely extraneous to the Policy, including declaratory relief that the proposed use of “.email” domain names incorporating third party trade marks is not “trademark use” under the United States Lanham Act, 15 USC §1125 nor cybersquatting under the United States Anti Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act 15 USC §1125(D). The declaratory relief sought also refers to a “breach” of the Policy or the URS Procedure when there is no question of breach, but rather, in this case, interpretation of the Policy as to who should be recorded as the registrant of the Domain Name, a determination that can be made without reference to those extraneous matters.
How the United Sates District Court for the District of Arizona could grant such declarations without the Complainant being party to the proceedings is not clear to the Panel but United States procedural and substantive law on these matters is not for the Panel to know or determine.
For a concurrent court filing to be of such significance as to justify the termination or suspension of an administrative proceeding under the Policy, it should in this Panel’s opinion relate to matters central to the requirements of paragraphs 4(a), (b) and (c) of the Policy. This does not necessarily mean infringement of trade marks but could concern ownership of registered or common law trade mark rights, or the existence of a licence or other contractual, fiduciary or other relationships giving rise to a claim by a registrant to rights or legitimate interests in a domain name or whether there has been registration and use in bad faith, within the meaning of the policy.
Having regard to these matters, and the fact that the Respondents have done no more than merely file proceedings, the Panel is not persuaded that this administrative proceeding should be suspended or terminated.
The Panel finds that the Complainant has trade mark rights in THEO2 for the purposes of the Policy.
The Panel is also satisfied that the Domain Name is identical to the Complainant’s THEO2 trade mark – as indeed it was intended to be for the purpose of the Respondents’ business model. The Panel is satisfied that the dominant component of the Domain Name is the compound word “THE O2”, which is the subject of registered trade marks and has acquired reputation in the field of telecommunications and related services. The gTLD “.email” does not carry any distinguishing weight.
The Respondents’ proposition that, if the Domain Name is invisible in its proposed use of it, then it cannot be identical or confusingly similar is based upon a misunderstanding of the requirement of this part of the Policy. This is a test of side-by-side comparison, made objectively, and has nothing to do with how the Domain Name may be used in fact. Whether actual confusion may arise may be relevant in respect of the Respondents’ rights or legitimate interests or registration and use in bad faith, but it is irrelevant here. In any event, the Panel finds that the Domain Name is identical to the Complainant’s trade mark THEO2.
The Panel finds that the first element of the UDRP is satisfied.
The Respondents object that they should not be required to justify their registration and use of the Domain Name, and earlier findings against them in that regard in respect of other domain names, when, in their submission, there is no evidence that they lack rights or legitimate interests in the Domain Name.
It is clear that the Complaint in this case goes no further, and could have gone no further, than asserting the Complainant’s trade mark rights; that no permission had been given by the Complainant to the Respondents to register the Domain Name; and that, given the rights of the Complainant, the Respondents could not have had rights or legitimate interests and, in their absence, and given the Respondents’ obvious knowledge of the Complainant, no conceivable registration and use could be in good faith. The Complainant might have tried a little harder and done a little bit more research into the public record, but nothing in the Policy requires it to prove a negative or matters which can solely be in the knowledge of the Respondents. It is not unusual at all in courts, as well as in determinations under the Policy, for the evidential burden to shift in these circumstances to a defendant/respondent; see WIPO Overview of WIPO Panel Views on Selected UDRP Questions, Second Edition ("WIPO Overview 2.0") paragraph 2.1.
The proposition of the Respondents appears to be that, because they have devised a system for a verifiable email delivery service using the Domain Name, amongst many others, and that they have taken substantial steps to implement that system for the purpose of a business, then this must satisfy the requirement to show rights or legitimate interests.
This proposition is to misunderstand the requirements of the Policy, read as a whole.
First, the new “.email” gTLD domain name string was delegated on January 2, 2014 and the sunrise period ended on March 15, 2014, soon after which domain names in the “.email” gTLD became available generally for registration – the Respondent says on March 26, 2014. The Domain Name was created on April 17, 2014, after the URS Procedure proceedings in Deutsche Lufthansa AG v yoyo.email, NAF Claim No. FA1404001552833 commenced on April 7. The other claims quickly followed: the proceedings in Stuart Weitzman IP, LLC v yoyo.email et al., NAF Claim No. FA1404001554808 (in which the Respondents were ultimately successful) were commenced on April 18, 2014 and the proceedings in Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc., Sheraton LLC, Sheraton International IP, LLC v. Giovanni Laporta / yoyo.email, WIPO Case No. D2014-0686 commenced on April 25, 2014.
It would be reasonable to conclude that, even if the Respondents were unaware of the umbrage of trade mark owners concerning their business plan on March 26, 2014, they were very quickly made aware. It is the view of the Panel that an experienced business person such as the second Respondent, the guiding mind behind this plan, was undoubtedly aware of the potential objections of trade mark owners and proceeded regardless, perhaps honestly believing in the propriety of his business model; see, for example, Telstra Corporation Limited v. India Yellow Pages, WIPO Case No. D2002-0651. It goes without saying that he was fully aware of the Complainant and its trade mark rights. In any event, it is not clear how much of the preparations of the Respondents preceded the date upon which they became aware of the objections of trade mark owners generally, and of the Complainant in particular.
Furthermore, when paragraph 4(c)(i) of the Policy gives as an example of proof of rights to and legitimate interests in domain name demonstrable preparations to use that domain name or a name corresponding to it, which may be understood to extend to a number of related domain names, in connection with a bona fide offering of goods or services, it would seem to be speaking of a “trade mark use” of a name, one that refers to an offering of goods or services. It cannot be that the sort of business to which the Policy is referring in paragraph 4(c)(i) is one requiring the unauthorized use1 of thousands of unrelated domain names, the vast majority of which are identical to famous trade marks belonging to others. If that were considered to be legitimate, then the Policy may be rendered meaningless, as large-scale cybersquatting would be justified. There needs to be something more than just this.
It is clear that neither of the Respondents is commonly known by the Domain Name (or any name corresponding to it) and that the Respondents’ proposed use of the Domain Name is as part of business (i.e., it is commercial), so neither of the two remaining considerations under paragraph 4(c) of the Policy is invoked.
Furthermore, a number of decisions have made the point that it is insufficient for a respondent to make bald assertions regarding the business in which a good faith legitimate disputed domain name will play a part and its innocence, in the absence of credible supporting evidence of the use being made or proposed; see, for example, Cosmos European Travels AG v. Eurotech Data Systems Hellos, Ltd., WIPO Case No. D2001-0941. There is no supporting evidence in the Response, other than a list of domain names acquired.
The Panel accordingly finds that the Respondents have no rights or legitimate interests in the Domain Name.
The Policy is concerned only in part with “cybersquatting.” For example, the mere fact of registration of multiple domain names does not in any way suggest a breach of the Policy – there is nothing wrong or inconsistent with the Policy in the business of a “domainer.” However, a domainer must in appropriate circumstances defer to a trade mark owner if he was aware, or ought to have been aware, of the trade mark rights of a complainant and where there is no other conceivable good faith basis for the registration of such domain name (e.g., co-existence or correspondence to a dictionary term used for such purpose); see WIPO Overview 2.0, paragraph 3.4.
The Respondents cannot and do not suggest that they were unaware of the Complainant’s trade marks. Clearly, they registered the Domain Name precisely because it is identical to Complainant’s well-known trade mark.
“… Respondent has not articulated any reason why it was necessary to register trademarked domains in order to operate its proposed business, and (as noted in previous decisions) it appears that the business could be operated without the use of trademarked domain names. While it is not entirely clear why Respondent chose to operate its business using trademarked domain names, precedent makes it clear that bad faith can be inferred from the facts and circumstances; where the domain names “would have little value to Respondent unless there was to be some reliance on the prospect of confusion,” bad faith may safely be inferred. Pepperdine Univ. v. BDC Partners, Inc., WIPO Case No. D2006-1003 (September 25, 2006).
After this string of adverse decisions, Respondent was clearly on notice that it needed to provide some plausible necessity for registering thousands of trademarked domain names. Given the notable absence of alternative rationales presented here, the most reasonable explanation for Respondent’s insistence on purchasing a huge number of trademarked domain names at significant cost is that Respondent intends to benefit somehow from “the underlying value of Complainant’s trademark… [which] is grounded in the right of Complainant to use its mark to identify itself as a source of goods or services.” Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin, Maison Fondée en 1772 v. The Polygenix Group Co., WIPO Case No. D2000-0163 (May 1, 2000). Such behavior constitutes registration and use in bad faith.
To add one further difficulty with the Respondents’ contentions, they have not explained why, if the domain names acquired by them were intended to operate as mailboxes or the like for the owners of the famous trade marks embodied in those domain names, they chose to register <lurpak.email> for the Mejeriforeningen Danish Dairy Board or <cravendale.email>” for Arla Foods amba. It is by no means self-evident that a user of the Respondents’ service would address a communication to a company’s product, rather than the company’s actual name. Were a consumer, even less a person doing business with such a company, to write to a company in the hope that his or her email would end up in the right inbox of these large companies, he or she would not be addressing a branded tub of butter.
The Panel finds that the Respondents have registered and are using the Domain Name in bad faith.
For the foregoing reasons, in accordance with paragraphs 4(i) of the Policy and 15 of the Rules, the Panel orders that the disputed domain name, <theo2.email> be transferred to the Complainant.
2 Paragraph 4(c)(iii) does not appear to be relied upon by the Respondents in this case, although, if they did so, the decision would be same.
3 There is, in these findings, no suggestion of moral opprobrium on the part of the Respondents, rather that their purposes and proposed use of these domain names are not consistent with the fundamental principles of the Policy, as explained in this determination.

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