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Username: spot
Date/Time: Sun, November 11, 2001 at 3:26 PM GMT
Browser: Microsoft Internet Explorer V5.5 using Windows 98
Subject: 3M Failed Reverse Domain Hijack: Defendent shown not to have used and therefore misused name

Message:
 

 
Source: Afternic email.

"Earlier this week, WIPO released details of an October UDRP
      hearing. The complainant, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing
      Company (known generally as 3M), received a negative ruling
      from the three-member panel assigned to the case. Meaning
      they lost.

      The case was not unusual. 3M lost because it improperly
      accused someone of cybersquatting. But as thousands of .biz
      registrations become active in the coming days, this decision
      provides an important reminder about the necessary components
      of a UDRP complaint, and about the use of the pejorative
      cybersquatter.

      As Francis Gurry, WIPO’s assistant director general and legal
      counsel explained in a March Afternic exclusive, the key
      element of a valid complaint, bad faith, requires three conditions:
      identicality or misleading similarity; lack of legitimate interest or
      right in the name; and bad faith registration and use.

      In fact, the 3M panel decided that the names in question were
      misleadingly similar to 3M’s trademark. Moreover, the panel
      found that the registrant had no legitimate rights to the names.
      But the registrant hadn’t used the names, and therefore couldn’t
      have misused them, and so was not a cybersquatter.

      Cybersquatting is grossly misunderstood and overused, and by
      the parameters established by WIPO, exceedingly rare. That
      doesn’t stop 3M and others from trying their luck in the UDRP,
      but it should make you and the informed public skeptical of
      virtually all cybersquatting accusations. "

 


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