First decision in favor of the respondent in a dispute in .CO

By Stéphanie Lacroix, on the 13rd of July 2011

The Comité Interprofessionnel du vin de Chammpagne (Professional committee concerning the wine Champagne) tried to recover the domain name champagne.co owned but not used by a British. For the first time, the WIPO Center of Arbitration and Mediation took a decision in favor of the respondent. Overview of this historical decision that also impacts the second market of the domain names in .CO.

Until June 2010, the trademarks had the opportunity to register in priority (« sunrise period ») their name in a new Top-Level-Domain (TLD) : .CO. This geographical TLD (“cctld”, Country Top Level Domain) of Colombia has finally been marketed. A lot of registrations have been done for its typographic similarity with the main used TLD: .COM. In June 2011 already one million of domain names were registered.

Many disputes have also been engaged in this new TLD to the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization).

During the first semester 2011, 21 UDRP proceedings (Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy) have been dealt with by the WIPO. The French companies were the more active, accounting for nearly 30 % of the complainants (read our article about this subject: The brands recover their squatted .CO). The Americans, the first one in 2010 concerning the disputes in .CO are now following the French (23 %). The British (around 20 % of the proceedings) are the third in the ranking.

What is the common point of all these proceedings? The final decisions were all in favor of the complainants with the transfer of the disputed domain name.

First decision unfavorable to the Comité Interprofessionnel du vin de Champagne

On the 21st of June 2011, the decision between the Comité Interprofessionnel du vin de Champagne (France) and the British Steven Vickers (Londres) reversed this trend.

The complainant represents the French producers of Champagne. It is recognized by the French law to defend, preserve and promote the interests of the wine sold under the appellation of origin “Champagne”.

The complainant holds 27 gTLDs (Generic Top-Level Domain) and ccTLDs consisting of the word “champagne”, and a further 101 domain names which include “champagne” as part of the name. The committee had previously already used UDRP proceeding to recover several domain names as champagnes.be (Belgium), champagnes.fr (France), champagne.ie (Ireland), and champagne.co.uk (United-Kingdom).
The respondent registered the domain name champagne.co on the 21st of July 2010 with 13 other generic domain names. Champagne.co has never been used by Steven Vickers. In fact he admitted that he registered the domain names in order to sell them later on.
The complainant argued that one of its purposes recognized by the French law is to protect the name “champagne”. However the word Champagne has not been registered as a trademark but as an “appellation of origin”. The committee did not succeed to assert its rights to the WIPO.

The decision taken by the WIPO Center of Arbitration and Mediation has finally been in favor of the respondent. The panelist recognized the word champagne as a generic term and an appellation of origin but not as a trademark owned by the committee.

An active second market

Steven Vickers registered along with champagne.co two other domain names related with the beverage industry: brandy.co and gin.co. Both domain names were sold to a Czech “domainer” Marek Hainc for respectively 6 000 and 5 000 Euros in June 2011. Very active on the second market for domain names, Marek Hainc also registered cognac.co, another appellation of origin. He believes strongly on the drinks names as he bought tequila.co and vodka.co recently. Since the 1st of January 2011, 20 domain names were sold on this second market with a price between 5,000 and 350,000 Euros.

See our section about this subject
More information:
Read the decision
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