The Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) lost a dispute over Ocasia.org in the arbitration of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). OCA is a respected international organization headquartered in Kuwait, with representatives of 45 National Olympic Committees of Asian countries. The organization holds the Summer Asian Games and aims to develop sports, culture, and education in the region. Moreover, until a certain time, the official OCA website operated at the abovementioned domain. The registrant of the domain name, the Kuwaiti company DEMCO, did not respond to the requests of the WIPO arbitration. However, the complaint filed against Ocasia.org under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) was left unsatisfied.
The reason behind WIPO Arbitrator Stephen Mayer’s unexpected decision is that OCA has failed to present any evidence of the statements made in the complaint. According to Domain Gang, back in 2001 the Olympic Council of Asia authorized DEMCO to register the Ocasia.org domain and a website for the organization. After that, OCA paid for the renewal of the domain registration and other expenses related to the website, but in 2019, the organization’s relationship with DEMCO deteriorated sharply. Since then, OCA has repeatedly demanded that the right to manage the domain would be transferred to it, but was refused each time, and then DEMCO stopped maintaining the website.
The situation looks plausible, but the problem is that the Olympic Council of Asia failed to provide any documents to support its claim: no agreement with DEMCO, no financial documents indicating transfers in favor of the company to renew the registration and maintain the website, or even correspondence with the company that would confirm cooperation. In this situation, the WIPO arbitrator ruled that the complaint could not be satisfied.
