The company inadvertently let the valuable domain name expire.
Voiceover marketplace Voices.com, Inc. has lost a cybersquatting claim it filed against voices.ai.
The first of three prongs necessary to win a UDRP is that the domain is identical or confusingly similar to a mark in which the complainant has rights.
Typically, the top level domain is disregarded when comparing a domain name to a trademark in a UDRP. But in this case, the complainant’s trademark, voices.com, explicitly includes the top level domain.
The three-person panel wrote:
In making the comparison between the domain name and Complainant’s registered VOICES.COM mark, the “.COM” portion of Complainant’s mark cannot be ignored, because the “VOICES” portion is not distinctive. Although it is customary to ignore the usually inconsequential top-level domain in the domain name, here “.ai”, in the present case, whether the comparison is made between the mark and the “voices” second level domain or between the mark and the entirety of the voices.ai domain name, the Panel finds Respondent’s voices.ai domain name to be similar but not confusingly similar to Complainant’s VOICES.COM mark as required by Paragraph 4(a)(i).
Voices.com previously owned voices.ai but accidentally let it expire. That was a big mistake; the domain sold for $25,000 at Namecheap earlier this year.
When the company tried to buy the domain back, the new owner stated, “I sold a domain fin.ai for $1M this year. voices.ai is $1M also.”
The UDRP panel ruled in favor of the domain registrant on all three prongs of the case.
Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP represented Voices.com Inc. John Berryhill represented the domain owner.
I previously interviewed the founder of Voices.com on the Domain Name Wire Podcast. He is no longer with the company.
Source: https://domainnamewire.com/
