Sunday, August 08, 2004

We Need A Shepardizing System for UDRP Decisions. Forgive me if this already exists, but I haven't seen it. I just came across a WIPO decision from 2002, PWC Business Trust v. Ultimate Search. If I'm reading this correctly, the panel seems to indicate that the fairly common practice of "parking" a domain name with a search engine or other list of links qualifies as a "bona fide offering of goods or services," so as to demonstrate a legitimate interest in the domain name. If this decision is good "law," it seems like a lot of bad-faith registrants can get off scott free... Although this decision seems to limit it to cases where the domain name involves "descriptive" terms (which actually goes beyond the limitation provided for in one of the cases the arbitrator cites, which approves of this practice with regard to "generic" words).

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