A UDRP was filed against the Cabot.com domain name at NAF. There are more than 1,000 companies with Cabot in their branding listed on LinkedIn alone and there are 46,000 people results. That alone should indicate the wide usage of the Cabot term. The Cabot I am most familiar with is a cheese company, and it was not the complainant here.
The complainant in the UDRP is Cabot Brand Co. Ltd. Just looking at that alone, I wouldn’t know which Cabot company is filing the UDRP. The domain registrant did not respond to the UDRP. Despite this, the UDRP was denied.
In the UDRP decision published this morning, the panelist discussed why this UDRP ultimately failed:
“The Domain Name was registered in 1995. Complainant’s first use of the CABOT Mark was in 2009. The Panel does not accept Complainant’s submission that ownership of the Domain Name changed hands on or around February 10, 2023. Complainant makes this submission based on the results of a Whois search that indicate that the raw Whois data was updated on that date. Raw Whois data can be updated for numerous reasons, including, for example a change in nameserver or a minor change in contact details. Absent any other compelling information, I am not prepared to conclude that the Domain Name has changed hands based on an unidentified change in Whois data. Equally (noting that the Domain Name has remained registered with the same Registrar) the fact that the Domain Name does not resolve to an active page, whereas in 2021 resolved to a parking page maintained by the same Registrar, is not conclusive evidence of a change in ownership; it is purely speculative.”
The sole panelist who presided over this UDRP is Nicholas J.T. Smith. In looking at the Whois History records at DomainTools, it looks like the panelist made a great call here.
The current Whois record indicates the domain name is registered to “R Riggs” with a Massachusetts address. In looking at the Whois history for this domain name, it appears to have been owned by the same person since at least 2001. This is the earliest Whois record on file for Cabot.com at DomainTools. Considering the “Complainant’s first use of the CABOT Mark was in 2009,” the current registrant owned this domain name long before that. It is possible the registrant could have been the original registrant from 1995, but Whois records at DomainTools do not go back that far.
