Rights or Legitimate Interests



Whilst the Complainant gave the Respondent no
rights in respect of the disputed domain name, the Respondent has satisfied the
onus under Paragraph 4(c)(i) of the Policy. It is clear from the evidence that it has
been, since 1997, conducting a business of registering domain names and, in
particular, registering domain names for the country code “.cc.” At the date when the Respondent commenced
this business in 1996, the Complainant was not legally in existence and there
was no documentary evidence of the Complainant having acquired the business of
FIC.



In late 1997, the Respondent cultivated a
connection with the administrator of the “.cc” country code, apparently seeing
value in selling domains with this suffix.
The Respondent registered a number of generic names with the “.cc”
suffix which it believed would turn out to be of value. The disputed domain name was one of
these. The Respondent had rights in the
disputed domain name when it registered it in 1997, before the Complainant had
established rights in the mark. See Warm
Things Inc. v. Weiss, D2002-0085
(WIPO Apr. 18, 2002).


“Register”, being a common word used in
connection with domain hosting services, the Panel finds that the Respondent is
using the disputed domain name in connection with a bona fide offering of services and that it was doing so before it
had notice of the dispute.

http://www.conceptualist.com/2008/03/20/registercom-claim-for-registercc-denied/@Domainer