August 29, 2005

MNG complaint denied

The holder of the well-known international trademark MNG used in the fashion business, loses mng.com to a Respondent whose business is to provide search engines pertinent to generic 3-letter domain names, and who has a legitimate common-law service mark rights for mng.com.
On bad faith, Panel wrote that "it may be assumed that the letter combination “mng” may be used by some as an abbreviation, and that the degree of distinctiveness is small", and that "Respondent registered the domain name to redirect Internet traffic to its search engine, but without the intention to freeride on the goodwill created by Complainant in it trademarks".

WIPO Decision D2005-0573

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