The complainant at WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) is Volkswagen AG, which is well known in Germany. The defendant is the domain owner of volkswagen.buzz, a private person residing in Germany with apparently very good knowledge of the German language. The domain volkswagen.buzz was registered on January 24, 2018.
Volkswagen AG is an internationally renowned automobile manufacturer headquartered in Wolfsburg. The company was founded in 1937 and has production facilities all over the world. With more than 10 million cars sold worldwide, it is one of the most well-known companies in the world. The complainant owns various trademarks in all registers. In some previous complaints procedures at WIPO, it has already been certified that the "Volkswagen" brand is a well-known brand, mainly due to the numerous trademark registrations all over the world and its use for over 75 years.
The complainant states to WIPO that the disputed domain name is identical to various trademarks of the complainant and that the defendant has neither rights nor a legitimate interest in this domain name. Furthermore, it is also not known under the domain name volkswagen.buzz and the complainant suspects that it would like to give a misleading impression to potential visitors to this domain. She emphasizes that he has illegally registered and used the domain name. In addition, he must have maliciously registered the domain because he must have known the trademark because of its worldwide reputation. It refers to a previous decision of WIPO in 2000, in which it was assessed that bad faith exists when the domain name is as obviously associated with such a well-known product as appears to be the case here.
The defendant reacts only in a letter in German that he will neither accept letters in this regard nor respond to requests from a Swiss company by an employee of Asian origin. This applies both to e-mails and telephone enquiries from abroad. In addition, he is annoyed that the German data protection regulations, especially for private individuals, have been disregarded.
The Panel decided that the language of the proceedings is English and that the domain name is identical to various trademarks of the defendant. It also finds that the defendant has neither a right of use nor a legitimate interest. Here again it justifies that passive use is not a legitimate use. In addition, it is derived from the awareness of the trademark that the defendant must have known it - especially in Germany - and therefore registered the domain maliciously. Malicious use is decided because the obvious lack of active use of the domain does not in itself preclude a determination of bad faith.
The final decision of WIPO based on all arguments is therefore the deletion of the domain. The full decision on the complaint (D2018-0922) can be found on the WIPO website.
At the present time (09.07.2018), the domain is neither deleted nor in a status that results in deletion. It remains to be seen when this will happen. Even more exciting - especially for Volkswagen - is the question of how long the domain will not be registered by the next malicious or naïve person.