British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has won a dispute over the domain name gordonrumsay.com at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Arbitration and Mediation Center. The domain is only one letter different from Ramsay's official website – gordonramsay.com. The famous chef drew attention to a clear attempt of typosquatting (registering a domain whose name is one or more letters different from a protected trademark name) and filed a UDRP – or his lawyers did, which is more likely.
The outcome of the proceedings came as no surprise. The domain gordonrumsay.com was registered by Oleksii Kushnarenko (the WIPO documents list him as a citizen of the Russian Federation, although the spelling of his name suggests Ukrainian citizenship) through the registrar company RU-CENTER in February 2019, much later than the GORDON RAMSAY trademarks were registered in the UK, USA and European Union. Moreover, gordonrumsay.com featured a website that published photos of Gordon Ramsay, recipes for his dishes and links to his restaurants. However, the site owners apparently decided to broaden the horizons of their audience by posting recipes from another famous British chef – Jamie Oliver. Mr. Kushnarenko did not respond to numerous inquiries from Gordon Ramsay’s lawyers and WIPO. As a result, panelist Assen Alexiev decided that the domain name gordonrumsay.com should be transferred to Gordon Ramsay, according to The Domains.