Cork Wins cork.eu ADR Against Traffic Web Holding BV

Cork City council won its ADR against cybersquatter Traffic Web Holding BV and has recovered cork.eu domain.

The panel found that Traffic Web Holding BV had registered the domain with an expedited Benelux trademark. The panel stated that:

“The ADR Panel is of the opinion that it is sufficiently demonstrated that the Respondent used Respondent’s Prior Right with the intention and the purpose to obstruct the registration by Complainant during the Sunrise period as a eu-domain name.”

The decision is a damning indictment of the way that the .eu Sunrise phases were exploited by cybersquatters with expedited Benelux trademarks. Of course  EURid won’t take any action against such obvious commercial cybersquatting operations - that is up to the rights holders who have had their .eu domains grabbed. The European Commission really should reconsider the decision to award the contract to run .eu ccTLD to EURid. But then how can the citizens of the EU have any confidence in the European Commission or EURid when such obvious and blatent abuses have taken place?

Was the process by which EURid won the contract even fair?

Were the people advising the European Commission competent in the ways of the domain industry?

Why hasn’t the European Commission taken action against EURid?

Tags: Irishblogs,EURid, Domains, Cork, ADR, Eurid, Cyberwarehousing, domainnames

Written by John McCormac on February 1st, 2007 with 8 comments.
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