LONGWOOD, Fla. — Chaturbate again has come out on top against a domain holder in a cybersquatting case.
Last week, an arbitrator awarded the well-known cam portal a copycat domain — Chàturbate.com.
Notice the accent mark?
In the decision, WIPO arbitrator Douglas Isenberg said that the disputed domain name is nearly identical to Chaturbate’s trademark and that the only obvious difference is that one character contains a letter “a” with an accent symbol instead of an unembellished letter “a.”
Isenberg ruled the squatting domain name was confusingly similar to Chaturbate’s trademark, that the domain holder didn’t have any rights to the domain, and that the domain name was registered in bad faith.
He ordered the domain, held by a respondent in the Philippines who did not respond to the complaint, transferred to Chaturbate.
Industry attorney Lawrence Walters of Walters Law Group, who represented the well-known brand in this case and numerous others, said that his firm is “always happy to help Chaturbate enforce its valuable trademark rights.”
“This victory was particularly important, given the increased use of diacritic or foreign character domain names to infringe on standard, English character brand names,” Walters told XBIZ.
“Given the use of the Chàturbate.com domain in connection with an apparent phishing scheme, our client felt it was important to take quick action and put an end to the activity.”