J Vineyards & Winery, L.P. which owns the domain jwine.com, lost a UDRP on the domain name jwines.com which was registered on December 17, 2005.
The domain holder acquired the domain name from its previous owner on August 1, 2011.
The domain holder was represented by Ari Goldberger and Jason Schaeffer of Esqwire.com.
The three member panel found that while the complainant owned trademarks on J VINEYARDS and J VINEYARDS & WINERY, none of Complainant’s alleged trademarks are identical or even remotely similar to the domain name.
Therefore It is not necessary to make findings with respect to laches, rights or legitimate interests or bad faith registration and use of the domain name.
Simply put, there is no evidence whatsoever that Complainant uses J WINE or J WINES as one of its trademarks.
Accordingly, the Panel finds that Respondent’s jwines.com domain name is not confusingly similar to Complainant’s J trademarks within the meaning of Policy ¶ 4(a)(i).
Since the Panel concludes that Complainant has not satisfied Policy ¶ 4(a)(i), and because the disputed domain name is not confusingly similar to the Complainant’s marks, it is not necessary for the Panel to analyze the other two elements of the Policy.
The panel did not find Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) although I have no idea of why not and the panel doesn’t explain why it failed to make a RDNH ruling:
“On the one hand, Complainant must have realized before the Complaint was filed that it would not be able to establish that it had a trademark with which the disputed domain name could be said to be identical or confusingly similar.
“Moreover, there are aspects of the Complainant’s case that seem over exaggerated; for instance, Complainant submitted that Respondent’s logo on its website was “virtually identical” with the design of Complainant’s trademark, whereas there is no similarity between them. On the other hand, it may be that although Complainant’s case was seriously deficient, it nevertheless believed that it was justified in filing the Complaint.”
“Although the issue is finely balanced, having regard to all of the circumstances and in the exercise of its discretion, the Panel finds that it is not appropriate to make a finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking,”
