Thursday, October 30, 2014

#269 - ontariouniversities.ca - TRANSFER GRANTED

The Complainant, the "Ontario Universities Application Centre" (OUAC), is the not-for-profit centralized Ontario university application centre. The Registrant registered the domain name at issue on 18 August 2010 and resolved to a "parking page" inviting a person to buy the domain name. OUAC, ONTARIO UNIVERSITIES, ONTARIO, and UNIVERSITIES' APPLICATION CENTRE are not registered trade marks.


The Panel found that even if the marks had acquired enough secondary meaning to be considered unregistered trade mark, "Ontario Universities" is comprised of two generic descriptive terms that had a much broader meaning than OUAC. The Panel found that the Domain Name was not confusingly similar with any acquired right of OUAC. The Panel refused to make a finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking for filing this complaint even if done in "error".


You can read the full decision here.

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