November 12, 2008 at 22:01Denso.com was taken from the cybersquatters and returned to the Japanese
“The court deprived the Russians of a domain in the .com zone in favor of the Japanese company Denso,” writes RBC Daily .
And he describes the situation as follows:
Yesterday YOU upheld the decision of the St. Petersburg Court of Appeal to refuse to transfer Denso the rights to use the denso.com domain name. The Japanese concern Nippondenso - one of the largest manufacturers of auto parts in the world - was renamed Denso in 1996, after which the corresponding domain name in the .com zone was registered. Registration expired on March 6, 2000. A week later, the denso.com domain name was registered by Denso LLC. According to representatives of Denso, the domain registration was interrupted "due to a technical error."
In 2003, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in arbitration and mediation, ruled in favor of Denso, demanding that the domain be returned to it. Then Denso filed a lawsuit in St. Petersburg arbitration demanding to challenge the WIPO decision. After that, Gorodissky & Partners Law Firm, representing the Japanese side in court, lost the first and second instances, but then managed to return the case back to the first. After that, it was transferred to Baker & McKenzie, who won the first instance, but lost the appeal and cassation.
The decision of the Supreme Arbitration Court is commented by Denis Khabarov, a partner at Baker & McKenzie (a law firm), who supported Denso Corporation:
“It is important that the courts were able to convince that in this category of cases it was necessary not only to apply the norms of Russian law, but also to be guided by the broader approaches to unfair competition provided for by the criteria contained in the UDRP.”
It seems that the situation is quite straightforward, and the conclusions are obvious: the court accepted decision in favor of an honest brand holder. However, when I sat down to write this topic, I came across a note that represents an alternative point of view:
... the role of Denso Corporation in this matter is very exaggerated. The Japanese, having lost Denso.com in their time, are quite calmly using the domain name densocorp.com until now, and they were not going to start a lawsuit at all. I suspect that behind this process are Moscow lawyers specializing in trademark disputes, which, with the aim of banal earnings, knocked out the Japanese company at the beginning of the lawsuit.
and from there:
For a long time, Denso LLC, with varying success, managed to defend an honestly acquired domain name until it came to the highest court in Moscow, where, apparently, the plaintiff applied the most powerful extrajudicial argument (I think that all this understood the hint).
So it’s good to support the fight against cybersquatting until you come across the fact that a large corporation wants to take away your domain (probably, remember the story of Canadian guy Mike Rowe who managed to annoy Microsoft by registering himself with MikeRowSoft.com?)
And he describes the situation as follows:
Yesterday YOU upheld the decision of the St. Petersburg Court of Appeal to refuse to transfer Denso the rights to use the denso.com domain name. The Japanese concern Nippondenso - one of the largest manufacturers of auto parts in the world - was renamed Denso in 1996, after which the corresponding domain name in the .com zone was registered. Registration expired on March 6, 2000. A week later, the denso.com domain name was registered by Denso LLC. According to representatives of Denso, the domain registration was interrupted "due to a technical error."
In 2003, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in arbitration and mediation, ruled in favor of Denso, demanding that the domain be returned to it. Then Denso filed a lawsuit in St. Petersburg arbitration demanding to challenge the WIPO decision. After that, Gorodissky & Partners Law Firm, representing the Japanese side in court, lost the first and second instances, but then managed to return the case back to the first. After that, it was transferred to Baker & McKenzie, who won the first instance, but lost the appeal and cassation.
The decision of the Supreme Arbitration Court is commented by Denis Khabarov, a partner at Baker & McKenzie (a law firm), who supported Denso Corporation:
“It is important that the courts were able to convince that in this category of cases it was necessary not only to apply the norms of Russian law, but also to be guided by the broader approaches to unfair competition provided for by the criteria contained in the UDRP.”
It seems that the situation is quite straightforward, and the conclusions are obvious: the court accepted decision in favor of an honest brand holder. However, when I sat down to write this topic, I came across a note that represents an alternative point of view:
... the role of Denso Corporation in this matter is very exaggerated. The Japanese, having lost Denso.com in their time, are quite calmly using the domain name densocorp.com until now, and they were not going to start a lawsuit at all. I suspect that behind this process are Moscow lawyers specializing in trademark disputes, which, with the aim of banal earnings, knocked out the Japanese company at the beginning of the lawsuit.
and from there:
For a long time, Denso LLC, with varying success, managed to defend an honestly acquired domain name until it came to the highest court in Moscow, where, apparently, the plaintiff applied the most powerful extrajudicial argument (I think that all this understood the hint).
So it’s good to support the fight against cybersquatting until you come across the fact that a large corporation wants to take away your domain (probably, remember the story of Canadian guy Mike Rowe who managed to annoy Microsoft by registering himself with MikeRowSoft.com?)