Wednesday, April 4, 2018

#365 - lemetropolitain.ca - TRANSFER GRANTED

The Complainant publishes a French language weekly newspaper, Le Metropolitain within the Greater Toronto Area.  It first published the newspaper in 1993, with weekly readership of approximately 10,000 people. The Complainant registered LE METROPOLITAIN as a trade name in 2013.  The Registrant publishes a weekly French language newspaper called L'Express, and is a main competitor of the Complainants.

The Complainant alleges that the harmful conduct includes directing visitor's to the Registrant's website (l-express.ca) which reduces the amount of revenue that the Complainant is able to generate from advertisers.

Although no formal response was provided, the Registrant agreed to "voluntarily release the domain name".  However, the Complainant requested the decision and the Panel found that the Domain Name was registered in bad faith because the Registrant chose the Domain Name with a view to attracting business from those that recognize the Complainant's trademark. Given that the two parties are direct competitors, there is little doubt that the Registrant was aware of the Complainant's trademark at the time it registered the Domain Name.

You can read the decision here.