McCoy & Partners B.V. is a company based in the Netherlands. The Company provides information technology consultancy services since its incorporation in 2012. The company functions under the domain name McCoy-Partners.com and uses McCoy for its services.
The company was however aggrieved over the registration and continued use of the domain name McCoy.com. The Company tried to contact and inform the registrants of the domain name. After this attempt failed the company filed for a UDRP.
The Complainant has with it the Benelux trademark for the MCCOY mark registered in 2019. The Respondent had registered the domain name in January 2001 and used it as a parking page with PPC links. The Respondent was also said to be part of at least 15 negative UDRPs. The Complaint also claimed that the Respondent wasn’t the original registrant of the domain name and it had a prior registration date as well a registrant.
The panel did notice that the long list of Respondent’s UDRP defeats. However, the panel was convinced that this should not have much influence on the present case based on its merits.
The panel found that the key provision of bad faith in registration couldn’t be proved by the Complainant. The Complainant hadn’t acquired any rights at the time of registration which the Respondent might have violated, benefitted from or h0ad an intention to benefit from. The panel presented that the Complainant’s claim of a prior registration wasn’t backed by adequate evidence.
The panel pointed out that had the date of trademark registration preceded the domain name registration, even then the decision would have been trickier to win for the Complainant. This was because of the virtue of the commonality of ‘MCCOY’ mark in concern.
The Complaint was denied.
You can read the full case here.
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