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. "