Thursday, February 21, 2013

#222 - chicos.ca - COMPLAINT DISMISSED

The Complainant is Chico's Brands Investments, Inc. and the Registrant is Victoria Jouaneh. The Registrant registered the Domain Name on April 4, 2007, approximately 5 years after Chico's registered its trade-mark. The Registrant argued that the Domain Name was a generic term that she uses to refer to her young kids, and the Domain Name is being used by her for e-mail purposes (and her intent was to create a web site for her family pictures). The Panel found, as was acknowledged by the Registrant, that the Domain Name was confusingly similar to the Complainant's trade-mark. However, the Registrant had a legitimate interest in the Domain Name and there was no finding of bad faith. Since the Domain Name was the term used by the Registrant to identify her children, this proved she had a legitimate interest in the Domain Name. In terms of bad faith, the Panel found that this particular Domain Name was not used for commercial purposes, distinguishing cases of bad faith pursuant to 3.5(d) of the Policy.

You can read the decision here.

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