An international hotels group has been allowed to take over more than 1,500 domain names from a single person thanks to a ruling by a World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) dispute resolution panel.
The Inter-Continental Hotels Corporation and Six Continents Hotels, both owned by the InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), complained that 1,542 domain names previously registered by German resident Daniel Kirchhof contained terms which were the same, or very similar to, trademarks owned by IHG and misled internet users into believing that they were booking hotel rooms directly with the hotels.
The complaint was largely upheld by WIPO's Uniform Domain Resolution Policy (UDRP) arbitration panel, which transferred 1,519 of the domain names to IHG. The panel rejected claims on 10 of the names, while IHG's complaint was withdrawn on a further 13.
According to the decision, "the use of the disputed domain names in this manner cannot be considered use in connection with a bona fide offering of goods or services."
Under WIPO's UDRP rules, domain names can be transferred if it can be shown by the complainant that the name is identical or confusingly similar to terms that it has rights to, that the person who owns it has no rights to the domain name, and that it was registered and is being used in bad faith.
The ruling stated that, when internet users arrived at the defendant's websites, they were likely to believe that they had arrived at the official website for one of the complainant’s hotels, "as that is the clear impression given by the website content."
"As the websites provide a mechanism for booking at the hotel (albeit through another provider), the complainant is likely to suffer commercial loss when an Internet user books through the respondent’s website when compared with a booking directly on one of the complainant’s websites. The respondent is likely to receive a commercial gain through such transactions, as well as from displaying sponsored links to competitive goods and services," the panel said.
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