Complainant fails to prove “Identical and/or Confusingly Similar” although Respondent defaults

A complaint was submitted to the National Arbitration Forum on June 4, 2012 for the domain name medasurant.com.

Complainant was Assurant, Inc. from the United States and the Respondent which failed to submit a Response in this proceeding was ICS INC. from the Cayman Islands.

Complainant argued that Respondent’s medasurant.com domain name was confusingly similar to it’s ASSURANT mark. Complainant claimed that the disputed domain name featured a misspelling of Complainant’s mark, which is the lack of the second letter “s” found in the mark, and the addition of the generic term “med.”

The Panel however noted that Complainant failed to show or even allege why it considered the term “med” to be descriptive with respect to its insurance and financial services. Complainant provided no evidence or arguments of a connection between the term “med” and the services it provides under the ASSURANT mark, even after having been provided with an additional opportunity by the Panel, by interlocutory order, to provide arguments and evidence regarding this issue.

So the Panel’s decision was that the relief should be DENIED and that the medasurant.com domain name should remain with the Respondent.