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?

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

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Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com John McCormac
#1. February 1st, 2007, at 2:23 PM.

Yep Danny,
The problem is that the ADR process moves so slowly that it destroys any confidence in the process. Cork council should not have taken the initial ADR against EURid.

Traffic Web Holding BV is clearly a cybersquatter and there are grounds for revoking more its dubious registrations but  EURid would not do such a useful thing. Given the massive cybersquatting going on in .eu, it is hard for any businesses to have confidence in EURid or the European Commission.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Richard Hearne
#2. February 1st, 2007, at 5:12 PM.

Do you think this will change anything?

I bumped into a guy who has a property website hosted on a .eu. He couldn’t believe it when I told him it the whole .eu TLD was full of squaters.

Poor guy almost cried.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com John McCormac
#3. February 1st, 2007, at 6:55 PM.

That’s the problem Richard - most people don’t realise the mess that EURid has made of .eu ccTLD. As for SEO, .eu is a bloody disaster area because there is no country called EU but rather a pile of countries with different languages.

Though the best one is this:
www.google.eu does not exist.

Trackback Mention from Isquattedyour.eu
#4. February 2nd, 2007, at 6:45 PM.

Cork Wins ADR: John has covered the ADR in more detail.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com John
#5. February 18th, 2007, at 9:46 PM.

.eu had unfortunately some problems with cybersquaters, but because of adequate dispute resolution system(www.adr.eu) these problems are solved the months ahead.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com John McCormac
#6. February 19th, 2007, at 6:49 PM.

The problem with .eu is that the ADR process should not have been necessary for many domains. The management of EURid should never have been awarded the contract for .eu ccTLD. It costs nearly 2000 Euros for an ADR and with legal fees, it could be more expensive. Most companies that did not get their .eu in Sunrise 2 have decided not to pursue ADRs. This has left .eu with a major lack of credibility. The morons in EURid management are too stupid to realise the damage they have done to the .eu ccTLD. Upwards of 50% of .eu may be cybersquatted.