OnlineDomain.com Domain Name News & Opinions
Complainant with a Big Ass trademark failed to prove “Identical and/or Confusingly Similar” although Respondent defaulted. This seems to be a trend with clueless Complainants and their legal counsels.
The domain name at issue was bigairfans.com and was registered on February 19, 2012. Complainant was Delta T. Corporation and the Respondent was Yang hui from China. The Complaint was submitted to the National Arbitration Forum on June 18, 2012. Respondent failed to submit a Response in this proceeding.
Complainant owns trademark rights in the BIG ASS FANS marks through registration with the USPTO as well as trademark registrations for its BIG ASS FANS mark with the SAIC. Problem was that the Complainant couldn’t pursue the Panel that the domain name bigairfans.com was “Identical and/or Confusingly Similar” to it’s mark “BIG ASS FANS”.
Complainant asserted that the bigairfans.com domain name was confusingly similar to its BIG ASS FANS mark. The Panel noted that the disputed domain name contained the middle word “air” rather than “ass”. The Panel found this change to the disputed domain name to be highly significant since the other two words in the BIG ASS FAN mark appeared to be descriptive and the word “Ass” appeared to be the dominant portion of the mark. This Panel therefore found that the bigairfans.com domain name was not confusingly similar to Complainant’s mark.
So the Complainant failed to prove at the first element of the UDRP and the Complaint was therefore DENIED.
