Thu 11. Jul 2024, 12:33
A bank from Luxembourg took action against the owner of the domain snet.services, "John Doe", in UDRP proceedings before the WIPO. Unlike our last piece with a "John Doe", however, there was no accusation against the domain registrar for lack of owner data verification, because there was still a company whose name "snet" could refer to.
The complainant is the Luxembourg Banque et Caisse d'Epargne de l'Etat, whose roots go back to the 19th century. According to information on its website at spuerkees.lu, it has been offering a product under the name "S-Line" since 1996, which it has been offering via the Internet and later as a mobile banking service since 1999. It is the owner of "S-Line" brands in Benelux, the EU and the UK. The domain snet.services was registered in February 2019. The fact that it ever resolved to a public website was not apparent to the Australian lawyer and lecturer Warwick A. Rothnie was not aware of. The domain owner is "John Doe, Stichting SingularityNET" from the Netherlands, who stated in a non-official and untimely declaration that the domain was only used for internal purposes.
Rothnie dismissed the bank's complaint because it had not provided the necessary prima facie evidence to show that the opponent was not authorized (WIPO Case No. D2024-1681). In Rothnie's view, the opponent's late submission was still acceptable as it was received before he had been designated as the decision-maker and therefore did not lead to any delay. In the course of the examination, he established that the complainant was the owner of trademarks and that the domain was similar to them within the meaning of the UDRP; he was able to disregard the existing hyphen and the ending .services. The complaint failed on the question of the opponent's lack of right or legitimate interest in the domain. Rothnie recapitulated: the complainant argued that the opponent had only registered the domain snet.services after the trademarks had been registered for the complainant; it had not allowed the opponent to use it and - as far as could be seen - no corresponding trademark had been registered for the opponent. The opponent did not defend itself against any of this. For the complainant, there was therefore no actual or bona fide legitimate use of the domain by the opponent. On the other hand, the opponent's company name is "Stichting SingularityNET", from which the name of the domain snet.services could have been derived. In addition, the opponent has declared that it uses the domain for internal purposes. None of the parties had explained when the opponent's company was founded. However, Rothnie noted that "singularity" is a general term with different meanings. An organic Google search shows that the opposing company is listed in positions 1 and 4. The connection of other search results to the opponent remains unclear, but it shows that there are also other uses of the sign "s-net" than just for the services offered by the complainant. There was no evidence to support the complainant's allegation that the domain had been registered by the opponent for abuse through phishing. Ultimately, he could not establish that the opponent had attempted to exploit the complainant's trademark or that there was no reasonable, bona fide use of the domain outside the business area of ranking and finance associated with the complainant. Thus, he considered the prima facie evidence on the part of the complainant as not provided and the second requirement of the UDRP procedure as not fulfilled. Rothnie did not examine bad faith on the part of the opponent, as this would be pointless. He dismissed the complaint.
However, Rothnie did not waste a word on the name "John Doe" on the opponent's side, which is regarded as a placeholder like our "Max Mustermann". Why he tolerated this remains unclear. It can be assumed that a company name is included after all. But it could just as well be a "John Doe" to justify that the domain was legitimately registered, similar to what we saw in the proceedings concerning oris.com from "On-Ramp Internet Services". In that case, the owner of an email address that was stored with a reseller as the domain holder's contact stated that "On-Ramp Internet Services" (ORIS), under whose name the domain was registered, did not even exist.
The UDRP decision on the domain snet.services can be found at:
https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/dec ... 4-1681.pdf