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eMusic.com Loses CIRA Domain Name Claim for eMusic.ca
A panel of the Canadian Internet Regulation Authority (CIRA) considered a dispute between eMusic.com Inc. (Complainant), a New York based online downloading company and Mogul Arts Inc. (Registrant), a company that carries on business in Ottawa, over the domain name emusic.ca registered in 2001. The Complainant requested that the CIRA panel order the Registrant to transfer emusic.ca to it in accordance with the CIRA Dispute Resolution Policy.
The Complainant’s request failed as the CIRA panel found that the Complainant could not prove that the domain name was registered in bad faith. In particular, in examining the criteria under paragraph 3.7(b) of the Policy, the panel found that the Registrant: (i) refused an offer to sell the domain name to the Complainant and stated that the domain name was not for sale; (ii) did not register the domain name to block trademark rights of the Complainant as at the time of registration of the domain name the Complainant was not as well-known as at the time of the dispute and the Registrant could legitimately have ignored its existence; and (iii) there was no evidence that the Registrant had intended to disrupt the Complainant’s business, given that the eMusic trademark was not registered at the time the Registrant registered the domain name, the expression was generic and the Registrant was not a competitor of the Complainant.
For a copy of the CIRA dispute resolution panel decision, see:
http://www.cira.ca/en/dpr-decisions/00115-emusic.ca.pdf