Joe Merante's Blog

This recent decision from the National Arbitration Forum (NAF) 1 seemed like a good opportunity for a refresher on the UDRP. 2   Former lobbyist and ex-convict Jack Abramoff lost in his attempt to recover jackabramoff.com from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).  The domain redirects to a page on the DCCC site asking visitors to sign a petition reminding "Abramoff that [they] remember his role in the Republican Culture of Corruption and will work to defeat ethically-challenged Republicans in 2012."  Also that he shouldn't attempt "to re-write history with a new book and media tour." The decision came down to Abramoff's inability to establish trademark rights in his name as required by the first of three prongs in section 4(a) of the policy. 3   In summary, Complainant has provided no evidence of actual use of JACK ABRAMOFF as a trademark in connection with particular goods or services prior to the time Respondent registered t...

Each day I receive an email from the WIPO arbitration center listing decisions under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, or UDRP.  The UDRP is the policy a domain name registrant agrees to upon registration of a domain name which binds them to arbitration for trademark-type disputes.  WIPO's arbitration center hears the most of these disputes, though a few other venues also handle them.  WIPO hosts an extensive resource center for viewing past decisions, notice about policy changes, statistics and substantive discussion and summary of trends in UDRP panel* decisions. Over the past two years, I've been amazed (though not surprised) at how often Lego disputes come up.  The company is well known as an aggressive protector of their trademark rights.  A huge blow came in 2010 when the European Court of Justice (Europe's highest court) held that there are no trademark rights in the shape of interconnected toy bricks since the shape is necessar...