Bert & Wetta Sales, Inc. operates a wholesale business of green food items. The Company supplies green ingredients to other companies that use them to manufacture their finished goods.
The company was aggrieved when it found the registration and use of the domain USgreens.com. The company thus filed a complaint at Forum.
The Complainant has along with it a strikingly similar and confusing domain name USGreens.net. The complainant also claims the presence of trademarks, registered in 2019, with the first commercial use beginning in 2014.
The domain name in concern here, was created in August 2017. The disputed domain redirected to KansasWheatGrass.com, which also deals with Green Foods.
The panel however found problems related to the Complainant’s trademarks. It was noted that the owner of the said marks was USGreens, LLC. and not the Complainant. The Complainant countered this by stating that it itself owns USGreens, LLC., which is a subsidiary of the Complainant. The panel presents that even if the Complainant did own the mentioned subsidiary, under trademark laws the trademark would be vested with the subsidiary and not the parent company.
The panel also noted that the trademarks, registered by the Complainant, here disclaims USGREENS apart from the mark. When a trademark disclaims the textual elements of the mark, the same could not be presented to stand in a UDRP case.
The Complainant failed to secure the first criteria itself. An investigation into the rest of the criteria did not make any sense.
The Complaint was denied.
You can read the full case here.
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