Response to Utrecht Manufacturing Corporation
Sep 25th, 2007 by admin
The response of the UtrechtBlog.com owners to Utrecht Manufacturing Corporation’s attempt to gain control of UtrechtBlog.com is posted below.
First, the complaint: Utrecht-Manufacturing-Corporation-Complaint.pdf
And now, the response:
A. Identical or Confusingly Similar
RESPONSE: The Dutch city of Utrecht was founded nearly 2,000 years ago (47 A.D.) as a border fortress of the Roman Empire, its name having been derived from Ultra Traiectum (”downstream fortress”). How an obscure company from the USA, which we never heard of before, was able to get a trademark registration for that very same name, as they seem to claim, and then embark on a legal crusade to claim rights to any domain name that contains the term “Utrecht”, is, remains, and will always be a mystery to us. The Complainant certainly does not own any trademarks in the Republic of Panama, our legal domicile, and we plan to challenge any potentially adverse decision by the Panel in Panamanian court, and sue the Complainant for damages caused and time wasted by the preparation of this response.
B. Rights or Legitimate Interests
RESPONSE: We do believe we have the right to own the domain name UtrechtBlog.com, as much as anyone else in the free world who wants to blog about the Dutch city of Utrecht, or in fact any other purpose that does not collide with the UDRP or any applicable laws and regulations as the case may be. As a domain investment and web development company, we own and develop domain names, and monetize them through Pay-Per-Click ads provided by Google and others while these domain names await future development.
C. Registered and Used in Bad Faith
Below we respond to each point mentioned in Paragraph 4(b) of the Policy:
(i) Circumstances indicating that you have registered or you have acquired the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to Complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark or to a competitor of that complainant, for valuable consideration in excess of your documented out-of-pocket costs directly related to the domain name, or
RESPONSE: This does not apply. We never heard of the Complainant before, and categorically state that we would not sell, rent or otherwise transfer any domain name to such an obnoxious company under any circumstances.
(ii) you have registered the domain name in order to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, provided that you have engaged in a pattern of such conduct; or
RESPONSE: This does not apply. As above, we never heard of the Complainant before and were not aware of them until receiving this complaint.
(iii) you have registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of disrupting the business of a competitor; or
RESPONSE: This does not apply. As above, we never heard of the Complainant before and were not aware of them until receiving this complaint.
(iv) by using the domain name, you have intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to your web site or other on-line location, by creating a likelihood of confusion with Complainant’s mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of your web site or location or of a product or service on your web site or location.
RESPONSE: This does not apply either. As above, we never heard of the Complainant before and were not aware of them until receiving this complaint. UtrechtBlog.com was set aside for future development (a blog related to the Dutch city of Utrecht), and until such time the domain name displayed a pay per click search engine similar to Google.com (as a matter of fact, the ad feed was provided by Google).
Speaking of bad faith, it is not us, but the Complainant that has shown bad faith, as is amply demonstrated in their complaint. In their ANNEX 6, second page, they provide a webpage printout that displays the UtrechtBlog.com search engine results for the term “Art”. This can be seen because the page says
‘Following are the results for your search term: “Art”‘
What does this mean? Nothing else than that the Complainant intentionally entered the search term “Art” in order to generate art-related search results, which might or might not link to perceived competitors of the Complainant. We consider this behavior to be extremely misleading and unethical, simply because UtrechtBlog.com is a search engine and will display results for just about any term. This does not mean that UtrechtBlog.com was set up with the intent of causing damage to the Complainant and creating confusion with the Complainant’s mark. On the contrary, it is the Complainant that is trying to confuse the Panel by arbitrarily provoking the UtrechtBlog.com search engine into generating art-related results, and then trying to use these results as evidence that UtrechtBlog.com is violating the Complainant’s rights.
May justice prevail!
Up to this day, the world has known Utrecht as an ancient Dutch province and city of significant cultural, educational and religious importance and reputation.