Case Number: D2017-1680
Complainant: DealerX Partners LLC
Represented by: Phillips Ryther & Winchester
A Miami, Florida-based digital marketing firm, DealerX Partners, which specializes in targeted automotive sales, has been found guilty of attempted Reverse Domain Name Hijacking by the World Intellectual Property Organization. The company had attempted to grab three domains, including conquestautomotive.com, conquest.email and conquest.marketing.
The company had claimed it owned a series of trademarks containing term, “conquest”, including “conquest service”, “conquest pay-per-click” and “conquest retargeting”. However, the respondents, Visionamics/Citytwist Inc. and Lyndon Griffin, both of Boca Raton, Florida, noted there is a pending lawsuit, by an unrelated third party, seeking to cancel the trademark registration for “conquest service”, on the grounds the term is merely a generic description.
The WIPO panelists noted the respondent, itself, had been using the term, “conquest automotive”, in its own marketing materials to automotive dealers, unlike the complainant, which was not using the term in commerce. Additionally, the WIPO credited respondent’s evidence, noting “conquest automotive”, as a phrase, is industry-specific jargon, which refers to luring a customer from one vehicle make to another.
The three-member WIPO panel handed up its decision on December 26, 2017.
Source: https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=D2017-1680