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CIRA Allows Complaint Over niagararegion.ca
In a dispute over the domain name “niagararegion.ca”, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) transferred ownership of the domain name from an individual registrant to the complainant, the Regional Municipality of Niagara. In making its decision, CIRA accepted that since 2001 the complainant had registered various domain names incorporating the name “Niagara” and the word “region” and owns the official mark “Niagara Region”. CIRA further observed that the disputed domain name, registered in November, 2000, was being used by the registrant to redirect traffic to a website that describes a real estate and brokerage business that is not in the Niagara region.
Pursuant to CIRA’s Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, the complainant succeeded in its dispute against the registrant by proving, on a balance of probabilities, that: (a) “niagararegion.ca” would be confusingly similar to several trade-marks in which the complainant had rights prior to the domain name registration date, and to which such rights still exist; (b) the domain name was registered in bad faith since the registrant had previously registered domain names irrelevant to his business, but which contained third party trade-marks, preventing the owners of such marks from registering the appropriate domain names; and (c) there was evidence the registrant had no legitimate interest in “niagararegion.ca” since the registrant was using the domain name simply to redirect Internet users to his commercial website, and the domain name was not descriptive of any of his commercial wares or services.
For a copy of the CIRA decision, visit:
http://www.cira.ca/en/dpr-decisions/00084-niagararegion.ca.pdf