This domain name worth 5.1 billion US dollars was brought to arbitration twice by the terminal but failed!
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Many word-based domain names and corresponding corporate brand name-based domain names are not cheap, so it is not difficult to sell them at a good price, but it is very troublesome to encounter domain name arbitration. In July this year, someone filed a UDRP lawsuit against the Costa.com domain name with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Fortunately, the domain name holder won the lawsuit.
The domain name Costa.com was registered in October 1997. It has the meanings of "midrib, rib", etc., and can mean "coast" in the Spanish context. There is a potential big terminal behind it - Costa, the world's second largest coffee chain brand. In a statement released by Coca-Cola on August 31 this year, Coca-Cola agreed to spend 3.9 billion pounds (about 5.1 billion US dollars, 34.7 billion yuan) to acquire Costa from Whitbread PlC of the United Kingdom.
It can be said that the value of the Costa.com domain name is amazing. It is understood that the domain name was sued by a company called Cross Optical Group, Inc. in 2012; this time, the UDRP lawsuit against the domain name was filed by an Italian company called "Costa Crociere SPA".
The complainant Costa Crociere SPA is a cruise operator located in Italy and the owner of the COSTA trademark. It has registered several trademarks related to the Costa.com domain name, such as:
Brazilian trademark number 812749596, the device mark is "C" and COSTA is marked below, registered in Class 39 on July 4, 1989;
Brazilian trademark number 816856508, used for the device mark COSTA CRUZEIROS, registered in Class 39 on September 20, 1994;
European trademark number 012907754, used for the COSTA mark, registered in Classes 16, 39, 41 and 43 on October 17, 2014.
Before being involved in this UDRP litigation dispute, the domain name Costa.com had been used to build a website, mainly some paid links, and links related to cruises and cruise ships.
The complainant claimed that it is the leading cruise operator in Europe, with a 70-year passenger history since it began cruising in 1948, and has always used the name and mark COSTA, which is the surname of the group's founder. The complainant stated that the COSTA name they used is very well-known and had a certain degree of popularity before the domain name Costa.com was registered in 1997, and also provided evidence of the group's activities using the COSTA mark since the 1970s, including various books, magazines, flyers, advertisements, news reports, etc.
The complainant's views are mainly three:
1. The domain name Costa.com is the same as the COSTA trademark owned by itself, which is easy to cause confusion, and the respondent has no rights and legal rights to the domain name;
2. Some of the links on the Costa.com website involve the complainant's specific business, and the domain name is being used maliciously.
3. In November 2017, the respondent requested a price of US$1 million for the domain name Costa.com to prove that the respondent acquired the domain name for more benefits.
Fortunately, the arbitration panel ruled that the complainant failed to prove that the domain name Costa.com was registered and used in bad faith, and the complaint was deemed unsuccessful. The domain name holder also retained this domain name worth one million US dollars.
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