The UDRP rules do not apply to subdomain names

In a decision rendered by the National Arbitration Forum the Complaint for the domain names windoows.net and windooows.com was denied.

The Complainant was NOT Microsoft as one might expect in a “windows” related Complaint. Complainant was Comfort Window Co., Inc. and the Respondent was AL-SADEQOUN LIL-TASWEEQ LLC from Jordan.

Complainant claimed that Respondent’s windoows.net and windooows.com domain names were associated with the comfort.windoows.net and comfort.windooows.com websites, and that these domain names and websites were confusingly similar to Complainant’s “COMFORT WINDOWS” mark. Respondent claimed that the websites facilitate an offer of legitimate goods and services (free window replacement estimates).

Panel decided that the Complaint failed at the “Identical and/or Confusingly Similar” element of the UDRP so the Decision didn’t need to address the remaining two elements. Panel wrote that the “domain names” comfort.windoows.net and comfort.windooows.com are not domain names, but subdomain names. The UDRP rules do not apply to subdomain names. The Panel claimed that Complainant had established rights in the “COMFORT WINDOWS” trademark, but not in the generic word “WINDOWS”.

I wonder if the Panelist would call “WINDOWS” a generic word if the Complainant was in fact Microsoft…

With respect to the two actual domain names at issue, the Panel decided that windoows.net and windooows.com are not confusingly similar to Complainant’s COMFORT WINDOWS mark. Panel concluded that relief would be DENIED and that the windoows.net and windooows.com domain names would REMAIN WITH Respondent.

Since Complanant did not present any evidence (or even alleged) that the comfort.windoows.net and comfort.windooows.com subdomains ever existed, Respondent should have asked for a finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) but unfortunately it didn’t.