The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) arbitration has ruled on a complaint filed under the UDRP Uniform Domain Dispute Resolution Policy against the MC5.com domain name. The complaint was filed by American guitarist and founding member of the rock band Motor City 5, Wayne Kramer, and the outcome of the case appeared to be highly controversial. The fact is that the group is better known under its “abbreviated” name MC5, moreover, last year Kramer even registered the corresponding trademark in the USA, indicating the beginning of its commercial use in 1967, according to the Domain Name Wire.
An additional argument in favor of the complaint could be considered the fact that the Chinese registrant of the MC5.com domain did not bother to respond to an official request from WIPO - usually arbitrators take such silence very negatively. However, the panelist Sok Ling carefully delved into the circumstances of the case and followed, above all, the spirit of the law - that is, the desire to establish justice. To be fair, the band's last studio album, Motor City 5, was released in 1971. Since the early 2000s, the group has not existed in its original lineup. And for the last 10 years, Wayne Kramer has only occasionally collected session musicians for rare concerts under the MC5 brand.
This brand is not registered in China, and it is easy to assume that the Chinese registrant of the domain might not have had any idea about the existence (and almost ghostly in recent years) of the MC5 group. But he is actively involved in the domain business and, specifically, buys and resells short names in the .COM zone, consisting of combinations of numbers and letters. Taking into account all these circumstances, the panelist Sok Ling decided to leave the complaint without satisfaction. Observers consider this verdict to be an exemplary example of the thoughtful and fair work of arbitration in difficult cases.
