Friday, March 20, 2015

#278 - meguiars.ca - TRANSFER GRANTED


The Complainant established its case and the Panelist transferred the Domain Name to the Complainant.
 
The Complainant owns the family of MEGUIAR’S trade-marks registered as early as February, 1968 for use in association with cleaning care products.  The Registrant is Interex Corporate Registration Services Inc.  The Domain Name was a typical pay-per-click site. The Registrant argued that MEGUIARS is a surname, similar to others such as Maguire, Macgwire, etc.  The Registrant also argued that he searched CIPO for MEGUIARS (no apostrophe) but there was no match.  '

The Panel found that the Domain Name was confusingly similar since there can be no apostrophes in the Domain Name.  The Panel further held that the Domain Name was registered in bad faith because the Registrant has engaged in the registration of unauthorized domain names containing 3rd party trademarks including philishave.ca and abercrombiefitch.ca.  The Panel further held that “meguiars” is not a commonly known surname in Canada.
                                                                                                    
You can read the decision here