CDRP MSCanada.ca - Decision = Transfer (1.Viewing)

davidm

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I don't know why price is still a factor in determining bad faith, under the CDRP:

  • #478 - Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada v. Manpreet Sidhu (Domain Transferred - Three Panelists - PDF)
    mscanada.ca
    The Complainant owns the MS Canada trademark. The Registrant is using the website as a parked website, and offered to sell the Domain Name to the Complainant for an amount that must exceed $20,000.00. The Panel found that the Domain Name was registered in bad faith because the Registrant failed to provide any evidence that it was intending to use the Domain Name for a business "Merchant Services of Canada", and made a large financial demand offering to sell the Domain Name. (summary prepared by David Lipkus)
    Click to expand...
 
davidm said:
I don't know why price is still a factor in determining bad faith, under the CDRP:

  • #478 - Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada v. Manpreet Sidhu (Domain Transferred - Three Panelists - PDF)
Click to expand...
This decision hits home that domains like this need to be developed with some reasonable content that relates to the domain name, such as was the case in the following WIPO decision:

Arm Limited v. Harrison Canning, HTC Enterprises,
WIPO Case No. D2022-1129
(read the decision)
<CortexComputer .com>

Panelist: Mr. Andrew F. Christie

Brief Facts: The Complainant designs and provides sophisticated electronic products and related services since 1990. The Complainant sold over 200 billion products under its ARM brand and its products and services reach over 70 percent of the world’s ...


Held: Respondent assigned a “personal value” of USD $20,000 to the disputed Domain Name, which seemed to be certainly influenced by commercial considerations. However, being influenced by commercial considerations when assigning a value to a domain name is not, of itself, evidence that the holder of the domain name does not have rights or legitimate interests in it. In the context of the particular facts of this case, the Panel does not consider that the willingness of the Respondent to transfer the disputed Domain Name to the Complainant for a sum significantly in excess of his admitted out-of-pocket costs related to the domain name establishes that the Respondent’s motive in registering the disputed Domain Name was other than the one he asserted and supported with evidence. Having carefully weighed the evidence before it, the Panel finds, on the balance of probabilities, that the Respondent has rights or legitimate interests in the disputed Domain Name. Accordingly, the Panel finds that the Complaint fails.

 
Could it be there are multiple factors in the decision?

1) being that the domain name is parked
2) asking for large sum

I believe those two combined is the problem. I don’t park domains and I’m sure when you are parking a domain it plays a large role in their decision making.
 
Well I owned hundrerds of LLCanada.ca & LLCanada.com in the early 2000's and I remember working with Hover and making a script to buy them up.
That is how I got into domaining and it predates most of my inventory. In fact so much so that a large majority of these domains were sold by me although not for large amounts of money but enough to make decent profit.

Today I only have a few left and I must say this decision surprises me because when I look at the domain name I instantly think Microsoft and the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada does not even come to mind.

Personally if it was me I would challenge the decision in court but the owner did make some mistakes which I hope other owners will not repeat...

I have my domains at a number of marketplaces, priced and not priced but I point a lot of them to my MarketPlace here at dn.ca/market/mapledots. Domaining is a legitimate business and I use my marketpage to convey that. One of the mistakes people do is they pretend to own a business like Merchant Services of Canada. That is a no no, just tell the truth and tell them you are a reseller and you have a legitimate business. The domain is two generics with the word Canada. I never lost one but I learned my lesson early on not to pretend I own a made up business to justify a domain.
 
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I immediately thought Microsoft was the complainant, so there are definitely multiple uses.

A lot of these panelists are trying their damnedest to give away domains to notable organizations, and will continually pick and choose their rationale from their "list of spurious and unsupported reasons", such as the old canard "he priced it too high!!".

I'd love to force one of those jokers to sell me their house they've owned for 20 years at "no more than the acquisition costs".

It's incredibly obvious from reading CDRPs that the panelists are mostly in the hip pocket of business - it's late stage capitalism at work. Just read a few Claude Freeman specials and you might never want to buy a domain again. He once gave away a generic LLL to a company that no one outside of their local area has ever heard of - as proof the CDRP even misspelled the company name. :D

If the company wants the domain enough and uses the right panelist(s), they will get it - that's just how the CDRP and UDRP works. Just look at the recent UDRP where a company made first contact, then hired a GoDaddy broker to buy a name and he underbid the asking price, thereby proving to the panelist "that the price was much too high".

Seriously, as a corporation all you need to do is hire a GD broker, underbid the domain asking price and you automatically own the domain. Panelists be giving it away like candy.
 
There is more to it than that. Like I said, if you have domains that you feel are valuable. How can you park those domains? I went over the dispute in more detail and they even had ad’s that were related to complainant. That’s just asking for trouble.
 
Screenshot (54).png



theinvestor said:
I believe those two combined is the problem. I don’t park domains and I’m sure when you are parking a domain it plays a large role in their decision making.
Click to expand...

Yup that looks to be problematic, look at the last two links
 
silentg said:
Why can't all these panelists agree that selling a domain is a legit business and asking $$ isn't considered bad faith.
Click to expand...

That's the official stance of the IPO, but as you know these "rogue panelists' can apparently do whatever they want in order to place valuable domains in the hands of their corporate overlords.

Price is nothing compared to some of the BS these crackhead lawyers have agreed to - there have been several cases of domains transferred that were registered and owned for decades before the complainant even existed, but the panelist agreed with the assertion that (and I'm paraphrasing) "the respondent must have purchased it with the future goal of selling it to the complainant" i.e. the respondent is a precog & he can see the future, and ordered the domain transferred.

DING!

"What was that?"

"Nothing, just my Bitcoin wallet"
 
silentg said:
Looks like the ads are served by the registrar (NameCheap) and owner hasn't changed the nameservers after registering the domain.
Click to expand...

Exactly, and although I realize that the MSCanada decision was a fait accompli and that nothing could change it, in reality any ads served that do not financially compensate the respondent should be inadmissible as evidence of bad faith.

But again, these panelists are just grasping at any straw they can find in order to deliver these valuable domains to their corporate clients.
 
Perfect storm - probably could have been defended better, but Complainant has a TM filed in 1999 for "MS Canada", an exact match of the domain name; that combined with other items mentioned above worked against the registrant. I believe a lawyer could easily have won this case for the Registrant.
 
Fun facts here....

The only .ca I have left is MECanada.ca and in .com I have MBCanada.com (I turned down 75k for that one and in retrospect should have taken it and run)

I know theinvestor owns a number and so does Ilze from Excellent domains have a number of them.

I like DNCanada.com & DNCanada.ca - I wonder who owns them? ;)
 
All great points made above. I didn't read the whole thing but i suspect the nail in the coffin was probably that the whole Merchant Services Canada story sounded like BS and the panelists weren't going to be taken as fools.
 
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silentg said:
another UDRP abuse? ExclusiveBeauty(.)com
https://twitter.com/x/status/1570437819318910979

https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/pdf/2022/d2022-2374.pdf
Click to expand...
The Complainant didn't even have its own registered trademark for the words Exclusive Beauty.

The 2 design trademarks were owned by an affiliate company and they expressly disclaimed the exclusive use of the words Exclusive Beauty.
MapleDots said:
Screenshot (54).png





Yup that looks to be problematic, look at the last two links
Click to expand...
 
The footer says:


The Sponsored Listings displayed above are served automatically by a third party. Neither Parkingcrew nor the domain owner maintain any relationship with the advertisers.

Why do panelists fault the registrant for the ads?

Especially, when the ads are of a generic nature related to MS?
 
davidm said:
The footer says:


The Sponsored Listings displayed above are served automatically by a third party. Neither Parkingcrew nor the domain owner maintain any relationship with the advertisers.

Why do panelists fault the registrant for the ads?

Especially, when the ads are of a generic nature related to MS?
Click to expand...

Clearly, if the respondent had infringing advertising, then its a legitimate issue, and the respondant can't simply plead ignorance, regardless of any disclaimer. That is the domain owner's responsibility if they are going to park a domain name. If the ads are carefully curated to not be infringing then any argument made by the complainant regarding said ads should be ignored by the panelists.

In this case though, Multiple Sclerosis is a disease that no one owns a trademark on, but apparently MS Canada was able to get a TM on "MS"

Canadian Trademarks Details: MS — 0903614 - Canadian Trademarks Database - Intellectual property and copyright - Canadian Intellectual Property Office - Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

And worse yet, it is not just a regular TM, its like a governmental prohibited mark, covering all product & service categories. That seems to grant them exclusive rights to the term "MS" but they can choose to allow other "MS" trademarks if specifically requested.

It seems a bit shocking to me what kinds of marks CIPO allows - many are either unbelievably descriptive (thus should not qualify) or unbelievably generic - as in this case - it is a bit absurd that one entity can lay claim to all uses of "MS". There are a bunch of other "MS" trademarks though, I'd be interested to know if they had to get approval from the Multiple Sclerosis Society or not. I also see that that the McKay's did get an "MS" trademark to protect their MS.ca in relation to its name Mustard Seed.
 
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