Thursday, October 18, 2018

#372 - potterybarnbaby.ca - TRANSFER GRANTED

The Complainant owns the very popular POTTERY BARN and POTTERY BARN KIDS trademarks, registered in Canada prior to the registration of the Domain Name. Interestingly, the Registrant owns a competing business, pinkiblue, but is using the website as a pay-per-click site. 

The Registrant was represented by counsel and requested adjournments and suspension of the Complaint, which the Panel refused to do. The Panel found that the Domain Name was registered in bad faith because the Registrant owned numerous brand-name .ca domain names including babybjorn.ca, buybuybaby.ca, westcoastkids.ca, and bumbleride.ca, among others. Additionally, the Registrant was obviously capitalizing on the Complainant's marks. 

The Panel had an interesting discussion on the production of without prejudice settlement emails exchanged between the parties (and the potential panel bid in reviewing these documents), and despite offers to sell the domain name for in excess of reasonable fees associated with registering the domain name, it refused to find bad faith on this basis. 

You can read the decision here

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