An article entitled, Finally, a UDRP Panel Respects the Scope of the Policy, by Andrew Allemann over at Domain Name Wire, highlighted a recent ruling by the UDRP Panel, where the Panel exercised discretion in elaborating on the scope of its definition of cybersquatting.

The case is Human Resource Certification Institute v. Tridibesh Satpathy, and it is an example of a dwindling number of recent cases where an innocent domain name owner is allowed to retain his domain name even though it appears to infringe on a complainant’s service mark rights.

The Panel held in favor of Defendant and noted that;

“if the Respondent reasonably believed that what he was doing was legitimate, it cannot be said that his registration of the Domain Name was in bad faith.”

The Panel further elaborated on trademark law and cybersquatting;

“The Policy was designed to deal with a relatively narrow form of dispute between trade mark (and service mark) proprietors and domain name registrants, namely the deliberate registration of a domain name featuring the complainant’s trade mark or a confusingly similar variant of it with a view to causing damage or disruption to the complainant or his business or unfairly exploiting the complainant’s trade mark for the registrant’s own advantage.” Continue reading UDRP Panel Recognizes that where a Registrant Reasonably Believed that what He was Doing was Legitimate, then Registrant’s Domain Name Registration Cannot be in Bad Faith »