The latest IE dispute decision has been published by WIPO and concerns the domain taxassist.ie
The complainant holds several trademarks and other prior rights in the name, but the panel did make it very clear that any of the pending trademark applications and other rights that were established by the complainant after the registration were not taken into account:
Many of the rights relied upon by the Complainant are either, pending
applications or rights that accrued after the date of registration of
the domain name in dispute on July 30, 2007 and as such merely serve to
confuse the issues.
Another interesting element refers to the supposed 24/7 nature of online business:
The Registrant has argued that the Center has miscalculated the date
for filing of the Response essentially arguing that because domain
names can be registered on a 24/7/365 basis, every day is a working
day. Having considered the arguments this Administrative Panel rejects
these arguments. If the IEDR Policy had intended such an
interpretation, it would not have been necessary to refer to “working
days” as a reference merely to “days” would have been sufficient.
The problem with the registrants argument here is that the registry does not process domain registrations 24/7. While it is possible to request a domain at any time the actual registration of IE domains can only be concluded during business hours.
In any case the taxassist.ie case resulted in the domain being awarded to the complainant based on both their existing trademarks and extensive usage of the name.
